Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Kristijan Mrsic · nova-Institut · August 2026
From the outside, this reads as reputation-led. Publications, conferences and consortium work reach the part of the market that already follows the field, and they are silent about the rest. This map is the rest. The European segments that buy independent research and consulting on renewable carbon, who signs inside each one, and roughly how many companies sit there. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Chemical producers, Europe
The core of the field and the segment where a feedstock decision is a capital decision. Large enough to fund independent work, and slow enough that an outside read has to arrive before the business case is written rather than after it.
Who signs: head of sustainability, VP of innovation or R&D director, feedstock and raw materials procurement lead, corporate strategy.
27,000 to 30,000
companies registered across the European chemical industry; roughly 1,400 of them carry 250 or more people
Plastics converters and compounders
Downstream of the producers and closer to the deadline, because recycled content and packaging rules land on the finished article rather than on the molecule. Numerous, fragmented, and mostly without anyone inside who reads the policy.
Who signs: technical director, head of materials, sustainability manager, product development lead.
45,000 to 55,000
converting and compounding companies across Europe; the layer above 250 people is roughly 900 to 1,200
Consumer brand owners under packaging rules
Food, drink, personal care and household. They do not make the material and they carry the obligation anyway, which is why they buy the read rather than build it. The segment most likely to fund a study it can quote publicly.
Who signs: head of packaging development, sustainability director, materials procurement lead, corporate affairs.
3,500 to 4,500
European manufacturers in these categories at 250 people or more; the wider registered population runs into the tens of thousands
Pulp, paper and man-made fibers
Small by company count and unusually concentrated, so one relationship reaches a large share of the segment. Also the segment where bio-based is the incumbent rather than the alternative, which changes the question they are asking.
Who signs: technical director, head of innovation, business unit or mill manager.
850 to 950
mills across Europe, operated by roughly 450 to 550 companies
Recycling and waste operators
Wide at the base and narrow at the top. Mechanical recycling is a large and mature population, while the chemical recycling layer, the part that touches renewable carbon directly, is a named list rather than a market.
Who signs: chief technology officer, head of business development, plant or project director.
25,000 to 30,000
registered waste and recycling companies across Europe; the chemical recycling layer inside that sits in the low hundreds
Investors and project developers
The buyer type that funds the transition rather than performs it, and the one that pays for independent market data most readily, because a diligence deadline is a hard date. Worth being straight about a limit: this group is not enumerated at usable resolution anywhere public.
Who signs: investment director, partner, head of corporate venturing, technical diligence lead.
No usable public register
identified one at a time by mandate and by portfolio; the difficulty is the reason the segment stays open

Where the openings are

1
The seat that buys this work is new, and it has a name. Head of renewable carbon. Defossilization lead. Circular materials manager. Titles that barely existed five years ago now hold the budget, and they are filled by people who have not yet appeared on any conference list. A reputation channel reaches whoever already reads the field. A named-role channel reaches the seat in the month it is filled.
2
Two buyers, two budgets, and they do not refer each other. The person who buys market data sits in strategy or market intelligence. The person who commissions accompanying research and consulting sits in innovation or R&D. Same company, different door, and a reputation-led channel tends to keep arriving at whichever door answered first.
3
A conference reaches the converted. It is the strongest asset in this field and the narrowest by definition, because a company that sends someone is a company that already agrees. The band that stays unreached is the mid-size producer with a regulatory deadline and nobody inside to read the field for them.
4
Regulation is the clock, and the clock is public. Packaging and single-use rules, recycled content mandates, corporate sustainability reporting. Those dates land on named companies. Watching several thousand of them for the moment a deadline turns into a budget line is mechanical work, and it is exactly the part that a publication and a conference cannot do.
Built from public market data, counts banded deliberately. Counts describe registered companies across Europe rather than buying units, and one group may buy centrally for many sites. Size bands use published employment data as a scale proxy, so they indicate scale rather than an exact staff count. Sector codes are self-reported.
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