NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / September 15, 2025 / History books tell us about the first industrial revolution with steam, the second with electricity, and the third with automation. But let's be honest, recycling never made it into those chapters. For decades, it has been a side hustle for municipalities and compliance officers, more of a charity project than an industry. That changes now. SMX (NASDAQ:SMX) is stepping onto the factory floor with a partner that knows what it means to operate at scale, and together they are turning conveyor belts into value belts.

On September 15, SMX announced a Letter of Intent with BT-Systems' Competence Center REDWAVE, and the message could not be clearer. Recycling is no longer about dumping bottles into bins and hoping the right materials make it through a plant. It is about embedding proof into every piece of plastic and attaching real economic value to every cycle of reuse. Proof, however, is only as strong as the system that can deliver it at an industrial scale. That is where SMX's molecular traceability meets REDWAVE's high-speed sorting and detection, and the combination looks less like waste management and more like the start of a new industrial revolution.

Once executed, this partnership becomes the master key that unlocks commercial value from circularity, shifting it from a lofty ambition into real-world action and setting the blueprint for how waste is measured, priced, and rewarded across global markets.

Making Circularity Accessible at the Molecular Level

For those still catching up, SMX has developed a way to tag materials at the sub-molecular level. That tag becomes inseparable from the product and links to a digital passport secured on blockchain. Instead of paperwork, self-reporting, or wishful thinking, you get a system where proof is permanent. You know where it came from, how it was processed, and whether it meets compliance standards. This is not oversight after the fact. It is truth injected into the material itself, ready to be read at every checkpoint along the supply chain.

Pair that with REDWAVE's machines, which already dominate sorting lines around the world. They can separate waste streams at lightning speed, but until now, those streams were just buckets of material that could be mixed, mislabeled, or doubted. By layering SMX's traceability onto REDWAVE's precision sorting, those same machines can sort and certify in one step. The conveyor belt that once delivered bales of questionable recycled plastic will now deliver certified commodities. That is not recycling as we know it. That is a factory line producing value as tangible as steel, copper, or oil.

This is where the Plastic Cycle Token (PCT) adds another layer of disruption. Once materials are tagged and verified through the SMX system, they don't just sit on a balance sheet as inventory. They can be monetized as digital assets. The PCT converts the certification of recycled plastic into a tradable commodity on an open market. In practice, that means companies can unlock real pricing power from their recycling programs, governments can enforce quotas with financial teeth, and investors can treat waste streams as a new class of assets. Waste becomes wealth, and the factory floor becomes the mint.

A Partnership Enabling Commercialization of Circularity

SMX's founder and CEO called the planned partnership a pivotal step, and he is not exaggerating. When you start talking about global standards for recycling, you are no longer in the compliance business. You are in the business of reshaping how materials flow across borders, how industries define value, and how markets decide who wins. That is exactly the kind of leverage industrial revolutions are built on.

On the Austrian side, REDWAVE brings decades of credibility in sorting solutions. Their machines have always delivered efficiency. Now they can deliver trust. Efficiency without proof is just speed. Efficiency with certification is the foundation for a global circular economy. As REDWAVE's leadership framed it, this partnership creates opportunities to set industry standards that make circularity real, scalable, and bankable.

The next steps are already mapped. The LOI lays out a plan for joint deployments, integrated systems, and industrial benchmarks that other regions will be forced to recognize. Anyone who doubts that should look at what happened when Singapore launched its plastics passport initiative with SMX. What began as a pilot quickly became the model everyone else will be measured against. The same blueprint is now being drafted for Europe with REDWAVE.

Recycling has waited a long time to join the big leagues of industrial innovation. With this deal, it finally has a ticket. Conveyor belts are no longer just moving waste from one pile to another. They are producing certified, traceable, and tradable commodities. That is not recycling as an afterthought. That is the fourth industrial revolution, and SMX is running the line.

About SMX

As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.

Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intends," "may," "will," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Forward-looking statements in this press release may include, for example: matters relating to the Company's fight against abusive and possibly illegal trading tactics against the Company's stock; successful launch and implementation of SMX's joint projects with manufacturers and other supply chain participants of gold, steel, rubber and other materials; changes in SMX's strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects and plans; SMX's ability to develop and launch new products and services, including its planned Plastic Cycle Token; SMX's ability to successfully and efficiently integrate future expansion plans and opportunities; SMX's ability to grow its business in a cost-effective manner; SMX's product development timeline and estimated research and development costs; the implementation, market acceptance and success of SMX's business model; developments and projections relating to SMX's competitors and industry; and SMX's approach and goals with respect to technology. These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this press release, and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date, and no obligation is undertaken to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the ability to maintain the listing of the Company's shares on Nasdaq; changes in applicable laws or regulations; any lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMX's business; the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations, and identify and realize additional opportunities; the risk of downturns and the possibility of rapid change in the highly competitive industry in which SMX operates; the risk that SMX and its current and future collaborators are unable to successfully develop and commercialize SMX's products or services, or experience significant delays in doing so; the risk that the Company may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that the Company will need to raise additional capital to execute its business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that the Company experiences difficulties in managing its growth and expanding operations; the risk that third-party suppliers and manufacturers are not able to fully and timely meet their obligations; the risk that SMX is unable to secure or protect its intellectual property; the possibility that SMX may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; and other risks and uncertainties described in SMX's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters)