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VANCOUVER, British Columbia – ChopValue, a franchise business founded on recycling used chopsticks into value-added products, has secured $15 million in funding to launch its Microfactory Venture Platform to expand its circular economy concept into different resource streams ranging from coffee grounds to apparel scraps.

"Our humble chopstick beginnings are only tackling 0.015% of the global waste problem, and we have the right people, partners, and technology in place for the next chapter of our growth,” said Felix Böck, founder and CEO of ChopValue. “The micro-manufacturing model is a viable blueprint to scale a circular future and ChopValue’s value-added product engineering concept deserves to be scaled and live under its own brand: MVP."

"We are extremely excited about the brand's evolution and believe it could be our answer to deal with waste conversion locally, while educating tangible circular economy principles right in front of us,” said Arnoud Bakker, commercial director of Ikano Centres, part of IKEA Southeast Asia & Mexico. “Micro-manufacturing presents us with local opportunities to explore synergies within the community spaces we build and manage, and we look forward to exploring more about the ‘on the spot recycling and conversion technologies’ for the ideal circular product-market fit.”

ChopValue currently has 14 micro factories operating in nine countries. Combined, the factories utilize more than 100,000 square feet of production space to manufacture products. Among the micro factory locations are Vancouver, Toronto, Boston, Dallas, Liverpool, Manilla, Bali, and Singapore.

The company recently announced that it surpassed the recycling of 150 million chopsticks.