Building on its technology partnership with IBM and Under Armour, Technip Energies, which is listed on Euronext Paris with American depositary receipts, has announced the creation of Reju, a company focused on PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) recycling (rPET) of textiles. The new company’s focus is thus on creating new solutions at scale for the vast amount of plastic fiber in textiles that goes unrecycled and ends up as waste.
Former Under Armour CEO Patrik Frisk will lead the new company together with Technip Energies executive Alain Poincheval as COO.
Technip Energies, IBM and Under Armour have been working together since 2021 in a joint venture to bring VolCat, an IBM technology for rejuvenating waste PET packaging and polyester, to an industrial scale. VolCat allows the selective breakdown of polymers which IBM first applied to technologies like semiconductor lithography and microelectronics packaging. Reju intends to use this technology to address hard-to-recycle polyester garments and PET packaging lost to the waste stream today. With this technology, acting as a molecular sorter, PET could be regenerated infinitely.
The groundbreaking ceremony for Reju’s demonstration plant took place in September in Technip Energies Frankfurt Research Center. The plant is scheduled to go into operation in 2024.
Technip was also one of On’s partners in 2022, with whom the first shoe made from carbon emission, the Cloudprime, was developed.
