Smile Plastics is one of the biggest and most respected manufacturing brands in the world of circular design. Its ‘micro-factory’ in Wales is a demonstration of the viability of their no-waste local-manufacturing model, focused on recycling and recyclability of plastics, driven by a high-end design aesthetic.

Today, Smile Plastics 100% recycled and 100% recyclable products are in demand by architects and designers for high-profile projects worldwide, and the company’s achievements in sustainability have recently been recognised with over £980K in equity funding to grow the business further. The majority of this has come from the Green Angel Syndicate’s Climate Change Funds, BBI Fund and its own angel syndicate, as well as the Angel Cofund.

Smile Plastics is now preparing to relocate its manufacturing base to a much larger facility in Swansea, ratchet up production capacity by a factor of three, and double the size of its team – big news for the global circular-design movement, and for the local economy.

The ‘recycled’ business
Smile Plastics was first established in the early 1990s – a time when recycling plastic was a niche interest and climate crisis a much lower-tier global concern than today. Launched by Colin Williamson and Jane Atfield, the business was a small operation, focused on making 100% recycled plastic panels for the design industry.

For two decades, Smile Plastics led the way in the drive to reclaim and recycle plastic waste while demonstrating the incredible design potential of recycled plastic – perhaps most notably when Jane Atfield’s RCP2 Chair, made entirely of recycled plastic bottles, was added to the V&A’s permanent collection. The business wound down when Colin Williamson retired in 2010, and would have been consigned to history were it not for circular-material specialist Adam Fairweather (who had met Colin while at university and collaborated with him on a coffee-waste bioplastics project), and psychology student-turned-jewellery designer Rosalie McMillan.