Matium offers online plastics trading platform

Matium, a Denver-based online trading platform focused in part on recyclable and recycled-content plastics, says it has helped connect more than 400 companies who have traded some 75,000 tons of materials via its digital services.

The company, founded in 2021 by its CEO and former plastics trader Bailey Robin, says it increases the efficiency of supply chain companies through a "user-friendly" material management platform that simplifies and automates complicated and redundant manual tasks.

Robin says he learned about the plastics sector during a stint selling recycled plastics for Bach Polymers, a plastics brokerage based in Annapolis, Maryland. There, the Matium founder says, he built a 10 million pounds-per-month book of plastics trading.

Matium was created as a startup by Robin with the help of his cousin, Alex Lambrides, who has a background in developing corporate content management systems and websites.

Matium says it is now working with sellers, traders and buyers throughout North America by providing a “user-friendly platform recyclers can use on their phone or laptop to manage all the day-to-day tasks that keep them from building their businesses.”

In a market where brand owners, packaging producers and other manufacturers are seeking recycled-content plastic, Matium says its platform standardizes and streamlines material offers from your trusted partners so that procurement teams can buy materials confidently and efficiently.

Matium has received endorsements and compliments from several companies in the plastics sector, including an executive with Austria-based global plastics producer and recycler Borealis AG.

“The whole North American region needs something like your platform—I’m a true believer of your platform; there is nothing like you guys in the market,” says Jose Luis Chavez, a Texas-based director of business development with Borealis.

The company has collected similar endorsements from several other plastics and recycling firms, including Arkansas-based recycling company 3 Rivers Plastics, Canadian plastics recycling firm EnergiPlast, Michigan-based plastic fabricator PolyFlex Products Inc. and Costa Rican high-density polyethylene pipe producer KUPP America.

Robin says the existing plastics trading market allows some firms to profit and others to lose from “the waste and opacity of commodity markets.”

He says Matium is his attempt to create a sustainable supply chain using collected data to create a a more efficient and competitive infrastructure for trading.

“Matium is quietly making waves in the way people approach material supply chains, particularly in recycling and sustainability,” says Samantha Ryan, a network account executive with the firm. “We’ve developed a platform that allows for one-to-one material offers, creating a more efficient and transparent supply chain. It’s been fascinating to see how this is changing the way work is done in our industry, especially in areas like organics and recycling.”

On its website, Matium says it has “aggressive" plans for growth beyond plastics in the next 12 months and that “the future for the company and its network is one of abundance.”