NEW YORK CITY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / July 20, 2026 / A seismic disruption in the cost of manufacturing has permanently altered industry across the globe. Tariffs, geopolitical conflict, inflation, global supply chain disruption and shifting trade relationships have forced businesses to rethink long-held assumptions about sourcing, production and growth. The old rules no longer apply, the new math does not equate, and growth is harder to achieve when the future keeps changing. The new value is finding more value in old value, and building that to grow. SMX is disrupting markets and industry with new tools, innovation and strategies that help companies adapt. The technology pioneer is changing the fundamentals of manufacturing, helping businesses remain agile, competitive and positioned for growth. Its work has been chronicled by media throughout the world, including Forbes, Rolling Stone, TIME, Miami Herald, among other national and international media, which have identified SMX as a company helping redefine the economics of manufacturing.

On Friday, SMX shared details of its performance. During the first half of 2026, SMX raised more than $50 million to support commercialization, increased its cash position to $34.5 million, reduced payables and loans by 61%, increased shareholders' equity by 181%, and continued expanding its international commercial footprint through strategic growth in Singapore, the UAE and Japan.

The results reflect more than financial performance. They underscore a fundamental shift in what manufacturers increasingly value as governments modernize regulation, supply chains become more transparent and businesses look beyond traditional cost-saving strategies to unlock greater value from the resources they already own.

For decades, manufacturers competed primarily on labor, energy, logistics and scale. Today, they are competing on knowledge, certainty and efficiency. As recycled plastics approach economic parity with virgin materials and governments adopt Digital Product Passports, recycled content mandates, Extended Producer Responsibility programs and stricter verification standards, companies are rethinking how industrial resources are sourced, managed, certified and recovered throughout production.

Earlier this year, SMX described this new environment as the Age of Parity-a permanent economic shift in which recycled materials increasingly compete on commercial value as well as environmental benefit. In this new landscape, proof itself becomes an asset. The ability to authenticate origin, composition and recycled content is no longer simply about regulatory compliance. It is becoming an important driver of business value, investment decisions and long-term growth.

That evolution is creating demand for technologies that replace assumptions with verified data. Businesses want greater visibility into their operations, stronger compliance capabilities, lower operational risk and better ways to identify commercial value that previously went unrecognized.

One of the technologies helping enable that transition is the SMX Digital Material Passport Platform, which gives physical materials a persistent, authenticated digital identity that remains with them throughout manufacturing, distribution, recycling and reuse. As governments and industries increasingly adopt digital certification and traceability standards, Digital Material Passports are becoming an important foundation for verifying origin, composition, recycled content and chain of custody across the manufacturing lifecycle.

Supporting the Digital Material Passport Platform is SMX's broader technology ecosystem, which combines proprietary molecular marking with digital identity, chain of custody verification, certification, secure digital registries and the Plastic Cycle Token (PCT), a digital asset representing verified recycled plastic tied directly to authenticated physical material flows. Unlike traditional recycling credits or offsets, Plastic Cycle Tokens are issued only after recycled material has been physically detected, authenticated and recorded through SMX's platform, helping transform verified circularity into a measurable commercial asset. Together, these capabilities help businesses replace assumptions with verified information, strengthen operational intelligence, improve regulatory readiness, enhance procurement decisions and create new opportunities to recover value from certified resources that are becoming increasingly important across global manufacturing.

As manufacturers, recyclers, governments and global brands adapt to a rapidly evolving industrial landscape, demand continues to grow for technologies that transform trusted information into measurable business value. SMX's expanding international presence reflects that evolution, providing customers with the tools to operate with greater certainty, improve performance and identify new opportunities in an increasingly data-driven manufacturing economy.

Contact: Billy White / billywhitepr@gmail.com

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited