A UK chemicals firm has collapsed into administration. Loughborough-based Interface Polymers Ltd. was incorporated in 2016, according to Companies House, but administrators were appointed on April 13. Its accounts are overdue, with filings made up to April 30, 2025, due by January 31, 2026. But its last accounts made up to April 30, 2024. The firm is responsible for a crucial innovation within its sector.

Interface Polymers's website describes how new additive technology Polarfin was created - which enables successful compatibilisation of polyolefins and polar plastics "without detriments to mechanical strength or optical properties", thereby allowing the recycling of mixed plastics, like flexible packaging, back into "high value applications".

The company added: "This not only addresses one of the major challenges faced by the plastics value chain in recycling mixed plastics but also paves the way for improved sustainability and a more robust circular economy for future generations.

The company said: "Professor Peter Scott and his PhD student, Christopher Kay, invented a new class of polymer additives that have the potential to revolutionise the polyolefin industry."

It added: "In experiments, Dr Kay created a co-polymer comprising a polyolefin segment joined to a polar polymer segment.

"When added in small percentages to polyolefin resins, such as polyethylene or polypropylene, the additive molecules migrated to the surface and rendered them more attractive to other polar materials such as metals, ceramics and polar plastics, including those containing acrylic, styrene and vinyl acetate-based polymers.

"The team's unique discovery gave them the ability to independently modify both segments in the co-polymer chain."

The firm, which is based at the Advanced Technology and Innovation Centre, in Loughborough, has appointed John Harlow of John Harlow Insolvency and Corporate Recovery, which is registered at 29 New Walk in Leicester, according the the London Gazette, the official public record.

The Express has contacted Interface Polymers for comment.