Lego’s billionaire owners look for investments to reduce plastic

Plastic waste and new technology to produce alternatives to plastic are focus areas for the family’s investment fund.

The billionaire owners of Lego are set to shift more of their wealth into ventures that figure out how to reduce surplus plastic in environmentally friendly ways. Kirkbi, which oversees about $20 billion in assets on behalf of the family behind toymaker Lego, is looking for at least one new plastic project to invest in this year. That’s after first testing the market in 2020 with its purchase of a stake in Quantafuel AS, a Norwegian company that transforms old plastic into energy. In an interview, Chief Investment Officer Thomas Lau Schleicher singled out plastic waste as a key focus area for the fund. But it’s also looking at ideas such as “new technology for producing alternatives to plastic,” he said.