Circular solutions for textile waste are proliferating across the fashion sector, creating a fertile environment for innovation—and the beginnings of a competitive landscape.
The Textile Exchange conference in Pasadena, Calif. last week brought together visionaries from across the textile-to-textile recycling space who were keen to duke it out over whose product holds the most promise in terms of widespread appeal and scalability.
Magnus Lundmark, interim CEO of Sweden-based Circulose, asserted that the Renewcell successor is still the “No. 1 circular provider in the world.”
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The textile recycler, which was acquired by Stockholm-based private equity firm Altor in June, churns out new material made from pre- and post-consumer fabrics with high cellulosic content, from tree-based fibers to cotton. Lundmark, who served as Renewcell’s chief operating officer, said the group is gunning to restart operations at its industrial-scale facility in Ortviken, Sweden, and is working on upgrades to the mill with an eye toward jumping into action imminently.
A couple well-documented challenges contributed to Renewcell’s troubles, the chief executive said. “After then we started the demo plot in Kristinehamn, we were creating a lot of traction with the brands and the market… but it was still smaller volumes,” he said. When the company opened its Ortviken facility, capable of producing 60,000 tons of Circulose annually, the offtake agreements from once-enthusiastic brands and fashion firms began to dry up. It faced headwinds in the ramp-up stage with efficiencies, operating costs and feedstocks.
“When we then started to face financial problems, it was almost impossible to find big quantities of different styles products in the market that was based on the pulp that we produced from Ortviken. So this is a challenge for the business,” Lundmark said.
The cost of Circulose remains a hurdle for some brands, too. “It is a limited premium that you can demand from the businesses,” he added—especially when the company is looking to move beyond small capsule collections to sizable, long-term contracts.
“Our ambition, of course, is to be more or less a commodity provider with a circular footprint, but then also you come into a totally different business area where you have to be more price competitive,” Lundmark said. “So this is what we’re working on right now. We are really trying to find ways to produce things in a more cost efficient way, and partnering up so that we can, together with our fiber partners, provide more predictable future pricing.”
Kathleen Rademan, vice president of commercial strategy at Virginia-based Circ, said the textile-to-textile recycler, which creates regenerated cellulose from textile waste, needs partners across the fashion supply chain in order to spur adoption at scale.
“No adoption can happen unless you, No. 1, rigorously test it with that supply chain over and over again to make sure they can work with our product… and No. 2, we have to optimize that process to make sure that our product works for what they need to do,” she said.
“Deep” and “sustained” partnerships with supply chain partners will make adoption easier for brands, most of which are looking for circular solutions that fit into their existing value chains.
To support its goals, Circ has been working to develop such a network. It launched Circ-Ready, a community of global supply-chain partners that use Circ’s recycled content—from its pulp to its monomers and resultant fibers—to help brands achieve their design and production goals. “What we realized… is we had to work with a small set of suppliers with a large degree of overlap with key brands, making sure that they could work with our product on a regular basis,” Rademan said.
The recycler also teamed with Fashion for Good and Canopy to launch Fiber Club last week, which Rademan said would further simplify supply chain integration by locking in terms and creating a framework for bulk pricing to make scale achievable. And Circ last Monday announced a five-year strategic partnership with India’s Birla Cellulose which will allow it to ramp up production of Circ’s cellulose pulp to 5,000 metric tons per year.
“What I love about this partnership announcement is they actually put the numbers down,” Rademan said. “We worked very hard to make sure that we could make this tangible, and we’re very excited to share that with you as one of the key partners to help the adoption of next-gen materials.”
Seven-month-old startup Syre, which has pioneered a process to create virgin-quality polyester from textile waste, was the youngest of the innovators to appear on stage Thursday, but commercial development director Camilla Jorgensen said the Denmark-based firm is firing on all cylinders in an effort to accelerate growth.
It’s moving fast. On Wednesday, Syre announced a partnership with specialty polyester supplier Selenis which will allow it to create a “blueprint” textile-to-textile recycling facility in North Carolina, opening sometime in 2025. The goal is for the plant to deliver up to 10,000 metric tons of circular polyester each year.
According to Jorgensen, the launch of the North American plant is a part of Syre’s strategy to establish multiple gigascale production facilities across the globe.
Right now, the company is exploring possibilities—from Vietnam and other Asian locales to a hub in Europe. “This is a global thing that we’re looking at, and the aim is to solve the problem where the problem is,” she said. Syre aims to scale up to producing 3 million metric tons of circular polyester each year.
“When we started looking at this, people said, that sounds crazy. It’s not crazy. What’s crazy is that we’re not doing enough to scale up, because 3 million is actually quite little,” Jorgensen said. It’s not “near enough” to make a dent in the issue of textile waste globally, she believes—and that’s why it’s heartening to see the field for circular solutions becoming more crowded.
Perhaps all the jockeying for first place will accelerate progress and prompt companies to think bigger. “It will be a good day today when we’re able to be a competitor to Circ and Ambercycle and everything else; right now, I just look at them with admiration, because I know what it takes to work at an innovator,” she said.
