The Material Intelligence Platform
Know your polymer before it enters production
The first affordable, edge-deployed, multi-modal spectral classification system engineered for UK SME polymer manufacturers and reprocessors. Real-time identification of six common polymers with a >95% accuracy target — in a single unit under £25k.
- <500ms
- Edge inference
- >95%
- Accuracy target
- 6
- Polymers classified
- ~6 mo
- Typical payback
Validated in live manufacturing environments with
The problem
A quality-control gap that costs SMEs every batch
Around 180 UK SME reprocessors have no viable option between manual sorting and industrial systems built for material recovery facilities — leaving them exposed to waste, rejected batches, and looming compliance deadlines.
3–8%
Batch rejection from contamination
Contaminated feedstock drives production waste, energy-intensive reprocessing, and material that ends up landfilled.
70–85%
Manual sorting accuracy
The only realistic option for most SMEs — reactive, labour-intensive, and unable to reliably catch degraded or black plastics.
£100k–£500k
Cost of industrial NIR systems
Designed for large MRFs, these are far out of reach for the ~180 UK SME reprocessors who need verification, not high-speed sorting.
The solution
One unit that verifies material at goods-in
materiAI fuses two sensing modalities with edge machine learning to verify polymer type and contamination before material enters production — then feeds an immutable audit trail.
Multi-modal sensor fusion
NIR spectroscopy (900–1700 nm) for molecular fingerprinting, combined with multispectral imaging (400–1000 nm) for surface and contamination features — catching cases that defeat single-sensor tools.
Edge-deployed ML
Lightweight CNN models, optimised with quantisation and pruning, deliver classification in under 500ms on a Jetson Nano-class device — fully offline, at production-line speed.
Rapid grade adaptation
Transfer-learning architectures adapt to new polymer grades with up to 80% less retraining data, so the system keeps pace with changing feedstock.
Handles the hard cases
Reliable identification of black plastics, degraded polymers, and multi-layer contaminants — the materials that undermine conventional QC.
Syncs with Helix8's platform
Works offline yet synchronises with Helix8's AWS platform for GS1 EPCIS 2.0 traceability, Digital Product Passports, and CO₂e calculation per kg processed.
Built for SME production lines
A single unit under £25k that integrates into existing lines without major infrastructure change — verification and documentation, not just sorting.
Six target polymers
Classified in real time — including the difficult ones
Molecular fingerprint plus visual signature means black, degraded, and multi-layer materials are handled, not skipped.
HDPE
High-density polyethylene
PP
Polypropylene
PET
Polyethylene terephthalate
PS
Polystyrene
PVC
Polyvinyl chloride
ABS
Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene
How it works
From feedstock to auditable record in one pass
Scan at goods-in
Material passes the sensor head. NIR and multispectral data are captured together in a single pass.
Classify on the edge
Fused CNN models identify polymer type and flag contamination in under 500ms — no cloud round-trip required.
Act on the result
Operators segregate incompatible materials, adjust processing, or reject genuinely contaminated feedstock before it causes failures.
Document automatically
Verified results feed Helix8's platform — immutable Digital Product Passport records, traceability, and CO₂e analytics.
Value & ROI
Payback in around six months
A manufacturer processing 1,000 tonnes a year and losing 5% to contamination is losing roughly £75k. Early detection can recover £50k+ annually — with contamination-driven rejection falling from around 5% to below 1%.
- Recover £50k+ per year through early contamination detection
- 3–5% throughput gain from reduced downtime and rework
- Premium pricing on certified recycled-content material
- Hardware from £8–12k plus SaaS at £700–1,000/month
Illustrative annual impact
Figures are illustrative, based on Helix8's project modelling at current rPET prices. Actual results vary by site, feedstock, and throughput.
Compliance & traceability
Ready for PPWR and Digital Product Passports
materiAI closes the loop: automated material verification at goods-in feeds immutable, standards-based records — giving SMEs a first-mover advantage ahead of mandatory EU PPWR and DPP rules from 2027.
GS1 EPCIS 2.0
End-to-end material traceability across the process.
JSON-LD DPP
Digital Product Passport records generated automatically.
Energy & CO₂e
Real-time monitoring and CO₂e calculation per kg processed.
Audit-ready
Verifiable evidence of recycled content for brand-owner customers.
The consortium
Built and validated with UK manufacturers
A 12-month industrial research programme integrating multi-modal classification into a live traceability platform and validating it in real production environments.
Helix8 Ltd
Technology developer & project leadOperates the AWS IoT platform with full material traceability and Digital Product Passport capability already deployed at Plaswire.
Plaswire Ltd
Validation site 1Mixed HDPE/PP reprocessing environment — gains real-time feedstock verification at goods-in.
Border Plastics Recycling
Validation site 2Pellet and extrusion manufacturing — verifies incoming recycled pellet purchases against off-spec feedstock.
Get started
See materiAI on your feedstock
Tell us about your material and current QC process. We'll arrange a demo or a site assessment and show you the numbers for your line.
United Kingdom · A Helix8 Ltd innovation