University of Melbourne spinout R2Crete raises $750,000 for concrete recycling pilot

Melbourne concrete recycling startup R2Crete has secured $750,000 in pre-seed funding from the University of Melbourne Genesis Pre-Seed Fund and Uniseed to advance its concrete recycling technology, according to a LinkedIn post shared by the company and attributed to Melbourne Enterprise.

Startup Daily also reported the raise in a funding story headlined on the University of Melbourne spinout, identifying the company as a concrete recycling venture and putting the funding at $750,000. The supplied Startup Daily extract did not include further article detail beyond the headline and site context.

The Melbourne Enterprise account, reposted by R2Crete on LinkedIn, said the funding would support construction of R2Crete’s pilot commercial plant. It said the plant was intended to enable validation of the technology at commercial scale and accelerate industry partnerships. Field trials are expected to commence in early 2027, according to the same account.

R2Crete describes itself on LinkedIn as a Melbourne-based civil engineering startup founded in 2025, with a company size of two to 10 employees. Its profile says the company’s mission is to develop a scalable, modular solution to upcycle concrete waste into high-quality products for use in new concrete.

The company says its system is designed to provide customers with a simple, cost-competitive solution for low-carbon, circular concrete, delivering economic and sustainability benefits. Those claims are from R2Crete’s own company profile and have not been independently validated in the supplied material.

According to the Melbourne Enterprise post shared by R2Crete, the company’s patented process recycles waste concrete into high-value materials that can be reused in new concrete production. The post said the process recovers up to 75 per cent of the cement in waste concrete and delivers a 50 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions. These performance claims are attributed to the company and university-linked account, and no independent test results were included in the evidence provided.

The same post said concrete accounts for an estimated 7 to 8 per cent of global carbon emissions, and that Australia generates about 7 million tonnes of waste concrete each year.

The technology is based on research led by Dr Tuan Nguyen, a senior lecturer in the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, according to the Melbourne Enterprise post. It said Dr Nguyen and co-founders Warren Overton and Professor Mahdi Disfani received early support from the university’s Proof-of-Concept Fund and took part in the Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre’s Translating Research at Melbourne program to refine the company’s go-to-market strategy.

The Genesis Pre-Seed Fund’s website says it provides pre-seed investment and support to academic, staff, student and alumni founders from the University of Melbourne ecosystem. The fund says it was announced in 2022 and commenced operations in 2023 through the University of Melbourne and Breakthrough Victoria.

Breakthrough Victoria is described by the fund as a private investment company launched in 2021 to provide patient capital and investment intended to affect Victoria’s economy and wellbeing.