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Business of Fashion
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business of Fashion
Fashion's Recycling Start-Ups Inch Closer to Commercialisation
For years, the fashion industry has held up new textile recycling technologies as an almost holy-grail-like solution to many of the industry's environmental ills. But proving out this theory by bringing promising innovations to commercial scale has proved long and fraught. However, the last month has shown signs of fresh momentum, with a flurry of start-ups advancing plans to construct their first industrial-scale recycling facilities. In April, H&M-backed Syre signalled its initial intention to build a gigascale plant capable of producing 100,000 to 250,000 metric tonnes of recycled polyester every year in Vietnam. This week, Circ, a US-based start-up whose backers include Zara-owner Inditex, and Reju, a textile recycling venture owned by French engineering company Technip Energies, announced plans to build their first industrial-scale plants in France and the Netherlands respectively. 'Our first full-scale facility will push circular fashion over the critical tipping point in the global economy, proving that the future of textiles can be decarbonised, closer to waste-free, and regenerative by design,' Circ president Peter Majeranowski said in a statement. 'It's not just a major milestone for Circ, but a breakthrough for the entire circular economy at a time when the planet urgently needs scalable climate solutions.' Circ and Reju are aiming to complete construction and start operations at their new plants by 2028, paving the way to make tens of thousands of tonnes of polyester and cellulose recycled from old textiles available to the market for the first time. Syre is hoping to kick off the build in Vietnam in 2027 with a view to initiate production by 2029. Even so, the volumes in question remain a tiny fraction of the overall textile market and the companies still need to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in financing before breaking ground. To do so, they'll need to show they have taken steps to avoid the pitfalls that led industry pioneer Renewcell to bankruptcy last year. Lessons Learned When Swedish recycler Renewcell started operations at its newly finished industrial plant in 2022, it was hailed as a momentous sign of progress in fashion's ambitions to address the glut of garments created by an ever-growing industry. It took a mere five months for things to fall apart. Demand for the company's recycled raw material was weaker than expected, as it struggled to navigate the industry's complex supply chains and compete on price. Renewcell relaunched as Circulose after private equity firm Altor bought the company's remaining assets out of administration last June, but the supply chain hurdles and price-sensivity it initially faced are even more acute now. The upcoming generation of textile recyclers say they have strategies in place to manage the challenges Renewcell faced. A critical one is securing purchasing commitments from large brands, without which it will be impossible to raise the debt companies need to help build their industrial plants. Syre's venture has been underwritten by a $600 million offtake agreement from H&M and it is working to secure others. Circ and Reju say they are both in advanced talks with potential brand partners. In an intensely competitive market, the start-ups are also looking for ways to keep a control on prices. Though raw materials only make up a tiny fraction of the overall cost of a garment, any premium over conventional prices can quickly compound as a product moves through the many stages of the supply chain leading to inflated fabric prices. To combat this, recyclers are seeking to build up trusted networks of suppliers that can provide more certainty and transparency around pricing. Purchasing commitments from brands help with this, too. 'The ideal option is to have full pull-through so the material doesn't get stuck in the supply chain and it makes it much easier to line up the supply chain because we're confident there's a customer,' said Majeranowski. 'There's so much work we've been doing to coordinate all of this and put it together so that when we turn on the factory, it runs smoothly.' But demand is just one half of the challenge. The recyclers also need to show they can get hold of thousands of tonnes of used textiles to feed their industrial-scale facilities, a tricky feat in a space where there is no shortage of waste but textile collecting and sorting infrastructure is still nascent. 'It doesn't matter how many offtake contracts you have. … Nobody will invest unless you can tell them how you can fulfil your feedstock pipeline in organised fashion,' said Reju CEO Patrik Frisk. Reju, whose €300 million ($338 million) plant will have the capacity to produce 50,000 tonnes of recycled plastic, is engaging with over 100 sorters in Europe and North America to secure a reliable and traceable source of old clothes to feed its factory. Reju's technology is able to process a wide mix of fabrics, giving it more flexibility over the type of feedstock it can take compared to other start-ups, many of which have strict specifications over the mix of fabric they can take. 'We can take a very big funnel; everything nobody else wants,' said Frisk. 'I'll take your worst stuff; the stuff you normally would pay to incinerate.' Circ, which can also process blended fabrics, is taking a slightly different approach. The company is expecting to initially source most of the 70,000 tonnes of feedstock its French plant will be able to process from post-industrial waste imported from factories around Europe and in North Africa. It hopes to be able to switch later to meet its raw material needs with predominantly post-consumer waste as textile collections and sorting infrastructure in the region improves. 'It's a bit of a chicken and egg,' said Majeranowski. Syre only signed its agreement to explore construction in Vietnam on the basis that the company anticipates securing a license that will allow it to import textile waste from neighbouring countries to help supply the factory. At a moment where support for climate-friendly projects is wavering and becoming more politically fraught, government backing for costly, complex engineering projects is critical. Both France and the Netherlands are pushing to gain an edge in what they hope will be a green industrial revolution. For instance, Circ is hoping to gain access to grants and guarantees provided by the French government to help support new industrial projects. The countries have also pioneered policies to encourage more circularity in the textile space, with France the first country in the world to introduce a fee system to make brands bear the cost of managing clothing waste. 'There's a lot of noise right now on ESG,' said Frisk. 'There are people out there and countries and regions that are absolutely serious about this thing.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Inside Unifi's Textile-to-Textile Recycling Operation
At recycled fiber producer Unifi's facility in Yadkinville, North Carolina, workers pile hundreds of discarded garments onto a massive conveyor belt. As the belt lurches forward, mounds of old polyester shirts, sports jerseys, socks and other items cascade into a machine that will begin the process of converting them into new Repreve yarns. Unifi launched its Textile Takeback program in 2022 with the goal of expanding its operation beyond plastic bottle recycling to textile-to-textile recycling produce its signature Repreve recycled fiber. Last year, the company announced it would scale the program with an ambitious goal: recycling 1.5 billion T-shirts' worth of textile and yarn waste by 2030. More from Sourcing Journal The Mirum Moto Jacket is the Fruit of Another Tomorrow's Graveyard Diligence Taking Recycling Rules to the Next (Federal) Level How Fashion for Good is Addressing Apparel's Post-Production Impact 'We've created a textile-to-textile system that actually works, and it's available globally,' said Unifi CEO Eddie Ingle. 'Our Takeback process keeps materials in circulation longer, and it conserves resources—these products are made from waste materials, replacing virgin petrochemical inputs.' In theory, textile-to-textile recycling has the potential to revolutionize the way garment waste is managed on a global scale. But in practice, the process has proven rather complicated for a number of reasons. Synthetic textile-to-textile recycling relies on materials that can be melted down, so blends incorporating natural fibers such as cotton or viscose aren't easily recyclable, and dyes and finishes also can make it difficult to recycle some items. And beyond those technical limitations, the lack of built-in infrastructure for post-consumer garment collection and sorting such as that in existence for plastic bottles makes acquiring recyclable clothing more challenging. That aspect contributed to the downfall of cotton textile-to-textile recycler Renewcell, which declared bankruptcy and re-emerged last year under a new owner and moniker, Circulose. Unifi sources its garment waste from a number of places, much of it post-industrial waste such as cut-and-sew scraps from Southeast Asia factories, as well as misprint returns and pieces such as marathon shirts from races that never occurred due to Covid. The garment waste is then sorted in Unifi's facilities (the company has operations around the globe) and filtered based on parameters such as color and material. The pieces are then fed into the company's proprietary thermal mechanical recycling process. Ingle says the process was developed to solve some of the problems that have hampered textile-to-textile recycling in the past. 'This process has to solve four key challenges in our industry—filtration, color, quality and traceability,' he said. 'Our proprietary systems for high-volume grading, purification and strengthening protect the molecular integrity of the polyester while leveraging the efficiencies of thermo mechanical recycling. That ensures the consistency and quality of the products we make, and it also can enhance the physical properties of our products.' After being sorted and filtered, garment waste travels down that conveyor belt into a machine that will shred it. Those pieces then get melted down and eventually combined with recycled bottle plastic to create new Repreve yarns. Unifi conducts lifecycle assessments (LCA) of all of its products, including Takeback fibers and yarns, to provide data to partners on carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, freshwater use and other sustainability targets. And like bottle-based Repreve fibers, Takeback incorporates Unifi's fiber trace technology to ensure full traceability of products made with the material. 'Our data is really important for brands and companies to be able to quantify the environmental impact of their own products,' said Jordan Feigh, sustainability and product stewardship manager, Unifi. 'We are a global manufacturer, so we have to take into account different areas and their limitations—for instance, the Vietnam energy grid may be different than the United States, which may be different from Central America. So rather than looking at an LCA on a very broad scale, we've drilled down to five different supply chains to assess our products globally.' That data becomes particularly useful when comparing virgin fibers versus Takeback, both from an environmental and a quality standpoint. 'What we're trying to look at with these LCAs is how does Repreve compare against virgin?' Feigh said. 'Obviously if recycled is not on the same level or better than virgin, then no one's going to use it. So we need to actually prove that.' While the Takeback program is growing, for Unifi to meet its 1.5 billion T-shirts' worth by 2030 goal, Ingle said buy-in not only from brands but also consumers will be essential. Some of that is starting to happen, with Unifi partner Haggar now producing men's pants designed to be fully recyclable, including their buttons and zippers. Ingle said steps like these will propel this technology forward and allow textile-to-textile recycling to reach the same scale as post-consumer PET fiber production. 'If we learned anything from our bottle recycling experience, it's that demand will grow,' he said. 'People want to be more sustainable. But while circularity can be seen as a commercial burden, especially in the short-term, we believe it's an opportunity for the early adopters to get ahead of the message. It's the right thing to do.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Circulose Taps Longtime Cellulosic Collaborator to Drive Circularity
Circulose is inching closer to commercialization. The Swedish sustain-tech firm established a 'strong strategic partnership' with longtime backer Tangshan Sanyou, a 'close collaborator' of the recycled pulp's former puppeteer, Renewcell, since 2019. More from Sourcing Journal 'This Isn't About Competition': Why Textile-to-Textile Recyclers Are Teaming Up Challenge the Fabric Secures Fifth Edition Circulose Joins Forces With Canopy to Promote Responsible Man-Made Cellulosic Fibers In fact, the Chinese man-made cellulosic fiber (MMFC) manufacturer was the first commercial producer of Circulose-based fibers in the world—and the first to commit to sourcing significant volumes from the textile-to-textile recycler, former CEO Patrik Lundström said in March 2023. Now, Tangshan Sanyou adds another milestone to its track record, becoming the first heavyweight partner to back the born-again Circulose. By combining the latter's textile recycling technology with China's large-scale supply chain, the former's fibers will 'not only meet the growing market demand for sustainable textiles,' the partners said, but 'drive a transformative shift from raw materials to fabrics on a global scale' as well. 'This represents a crucial step forward in our global expansion strategy, fostering closer, more in-depth collaborations with innovative fiber producers and like-minded brands,' said Jonatan Janmark, CEO of Circulose. 'As the first major strategic partnership since the restructuring of Circulose, this collaboration will serve as a cornerstone of our success.' Rescued from bankruptcy by Swedish private equity firm Altor in June 2024, the resulting, rechristened Circulose continued bolstering its then-nascent supplier network (CSN) following cautions that sales failed to perform up to snuff. As a partner since Renewcell's salad days, Tangshan Sanyou remains the world's largest user of Circulose pulp for fiber production, per the duo. The manufacturer—which claims annual export volumes accounting for more than 40 percent of China's total viscose exports—previously shared goals of becoming the first to commercialize 100 percent Circulose content fibers, as underscored by the sheer volume of Circulose that the Hong-Kong based fiber producer purchased between over the years. Renewcell signed a five-year deal with Tangshan Sanyou in October 2020 for 175,000 metric tons of materials made from discarded textiles. This 'industry first' agreement was crucial in securing the funds for Renewcell 1: the first-ever industrial-scale chemical textile-to-textile recycling facility in Sundsvall, Sweden. The viscose powerhouse later upped the ante and committed to 200,000 metric tons of Circulose in August 2023; a move lauded by Canopy, which then lauded Tangshan Sanyou as a top-tier company in its annual Hot Button Report. That October, Inditex inked an 'inflection-point pledge' Circulose commitment with Tangshan Sanyou, given its status as one of several Chinese fiber producers plugged into Renewcell's sprawling supplier network. Per the terms of the deal, The initiator—and member—of the Collaboration for Sustainable Development of Viscose (VC) was to produce a fiber blending Circulose with a forest-friendly cellulosic for Inditex's suppliers. 'Together with Tangshan Sanyou and our brand partners, we will ensure the scalable development of ReVisco fibers by using Circulose pulp in a predictable and controlled manner,' Janmark said. 'We highly value our long-term partnership with Tangshan Sanyou and look forward to achieving mutual success as we shape the future of the industry.' Tangshan Sanyou, for the record, has 'always believed' in the potential of recycling cotton textile waste as it's 'essential for fostering' a green industry. The green developer's ReVisco fibers, produced using Circulose pulp, will work to fulfill the holy trinity of market demand—quality, capacity and cost—in turn, advancing both brands' status in the space. 'We have unwavering confidence in the market potential of Circulose and its new strategic direction, and we are excited about our future collaboration,' said Zhang Dongbin, executive vice president of Tangshan Sanyou Chemical Fiber. 'With the long-term investment support of Altor Capital and the market-driven, brand-focused strategies led by Helena and Jonatan, we believe Circulose will bridge the gap between brands and suppliers, pioneering a new era for the circular textile industry.'
