Backed by $7.5 million in debt funding from National Australia Bank (ASX: NAB) and $942,000 Federal Government funding, Noveco Surfaces is currently fitting out a new factory in Salisbury on Brisbane’s southside which is expected to have the capacity to produce 250,000sqm products that are free of dangerous crystalline silica in 2025.

That’s the equivalent of diverting about 5,000 tonnes of recyclable glass from landfill.

“Our theoretical maximum production capacity from the new Brisbane facility is about one million square metres which is about 20,000 tonnes of glass diverted from landfill a year,” Noveco Surfaces CEO Ryan Fritsch tells Business News Australia.

“We genuinely see ourselves over the next two or three years as being one of the largest benchtop players in the market.”

Noveco Surfaces uses patented technology developed at the University of NSW to manufacture high quality benchtops and tiles that are 90 per cent made from recycled glass.

“Through our formulation we produce an incredibly durable hard surface that is sustainably manufactured and fully circular as well,” says Fritsch.

“We can reprocess our products and recreate new products - and the knock-on benefit is that by using glass instead of quartz it is crystalline-silica free.”

The Noveco business was established in 2020 by Andrew Douglas, a businessman with an extensive career in the recycling industry including as founder of Mattress Recycle Australia, after acquiring the rights to the technology.

Noveco Surfaces was spun off from Douglas company Kandui Technologies earlier this year with plans to scale and meet the expected demand from the building industry for alternatives to cancer-causing engineered stone once the ban is in place on 1 January 2024.

The company, which is based in the coastal township of Gerringong, began operations at nearby Nowra with a tile manufacturing facility located at the Shoalhaven recycling depot.

“At a technical level, our benchtops are the same products as the tiles but just at a dramatically different scale,” says Fritsch, adding that the new Brisbane facility will initially boost the company’s current output by 15 times the existing facility in Nowra.

“The knock-on benefit of this is that we will go from a boutique manufacturer to a producer of significant scale in terms of the benchtop market.

“When you overlay that with the fact that we are producing domestically, using local waste, it also allows us to be competitive with large multinationals that are essentially the dominant players in the market.”

Fritsch notes that the debt arrangement secured with NAB affirms the fundamentals of the business.

“NAB loved our story of sustainability and being Australian made,” he says.

“Using waste as a primary input is very good from a cost perspective because our cost of goods is dramatically lower than our competitors.

“So, not only from an ethical and sustainable perspective, it’s a good business from a raw financial perspective as well. We are able to go head-to-head with the likes of Caesarstone which is quite exciting.”

Fritsch says the market response to Noveco products has been “overwhelmingly positive”.

“One of the biggest blessings for us is that for a lot of stonemasons at the small to medium level, the ban on engineered stone is quite problematic. They are tooled technically to cut engineered stone and when you start cutting products such as porcelain, specialised equipment and procedures are needed.

“Noveco products cut and fabricate very similar to engineered stone, but without the health risks.”

Noveco Surfaces is currently fitting out the Brisbane manufacturing facility with plans to start production in January. The targeted production of 250,000sqm of products in the first year is based on a single production line over two shifts.

“But we have already designed our manufacturing facility to add a second production line and additional shifts,” says Fritsch.

“When you get into the hundreds and thousands of square metres that is a dramatic percentage of market share.”

The company has secured key partnerships with recycling operators to source the glass required for production, but is also looking at potentially using glass from recycled solar panels – millions of which are due to be de-commissioned over the next decade.

“It’s a high quality glass that is perfect for us,” says Fritsch.

And while Noveco Surfaces is currently backed by debt funding, the company has hinted at a possible capital raising in early 2025 to further support its growth plans.

“We want to kick off production first before going to investors,” says Fritsch.