The Swedish textile recycling company Syre (Engl. “Oxygen”) was launched in March, and the plans were ambitious from the start. The company’s aim is to build 12 factories whose main task will be to produce circular polyester for the textile industry, among others. Syre’s partners include the H&M Group, which has also committed to using polyester in its production, and the investment company Vargas, owned by Altor founder Harald Mix and Carl-Erik Lagercrantz.
Syre raised €100 million in a series A round at the end of May, with investments from H&M, the TPG Rise Fund, Volvo Cars and the Imas Foundation, which runs and owns most of Ikea’s foreign department stores. The investors are no coincidence as they all depend on a large amount of polyether-based products in their manufacturing.
SGI Europe caught up with Syre’s CEO Dennis Nobelius between a trip to Vietnam, where one of the first factories will be located, and his daily work at the main office in Stockholm, where some thirty employees work. Nobelius and his team have plenty of things to do this year. Syre’s ambitious goal is to have its first plant ready in the US in 2024, and in ten years, the goal is to have 12 plants to deliver recycled polyester. Ambitious, yes – but also realistic, says Nobelius, relying on the company’s know-how and business models they rely on.
“I would say that we can do this because we can leverage the knowledge of our partners,” says Nobelius. “Financially, we lean on the Vargas business model regarding how we drive financing and global hyperscale. And the model of binding offtake agreements in large volumes,” says Nobelius, explaining that once the first factory is built, the technology is implemented, and the manufacturing is working, further expansion will accelerate. We call our first plant a blueprint factory; once it’s up and running, we can copy it to the next location. Probably the second factory will be in Vietnam and the third one somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula.”
He also explains that the location of the first factory, near Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, is logical. There, in Raleigh, about twenty universities are located, all of which have conducted research in the field of textiles over the last 100 years.
In the US, Syre also discovered the technology on which the polyester recycling process is based. Until now, the problem with recycled polyester has been that the raw material from PET bottles and recycled clothing can usually only be used once or twice. Syre’s co-owner Susanna Campbell was therefore tasked early on with scouting out scalable and cost-effective technologies that would enable collected polyester from, for example, clothing or waste from the manufacture of clothing to be recycled circularly, known as textile-to-textile. After looking at around 20 solutions worldwide, Campbell’s team was drawn to Professors Matthew Parrott and Chris Luft from the University of North Carolina, who, through research and practical testing, found a solution to recycle collected polyester and recycle it indefinitely. Parrott and Luft were a perfect match for Syre.
“They had the technology but not the knowledge of how to scale it up and take it to companies and customers, which is what we can do,” says Nobelius, who explains that both professors and two of their colleagues are now employed by Syre and work in R&D for the company.
As for the secret formula, Nobelius reveals a bit about how the new polyester is made.
“The polyester granulate [the ground, recycled polyester] is mixed with glycol and heated to 250 degrees”, says Nobelius. “After adding two gentle chemicals, the polyester mass is ready for the production of yarn according to the customer’s wishes who emphasizes that Syre from the start is aimed at all types of customers who need polyester yarn.” He says this is not an internal production facility for H&M and Ikea. “No, our goal from the start has been to invite brands other than our partners to produce with us. This will not be exclusive to H&M or Volvo. Do you know, for example, that when airbags are manufactured, 20 percent of the polyester becomes waste?”
The interview with Nobelius was conducted online when SGI was covering OutDoor by ISPO. Several of the brands exhibiting are major users of polyester, and several of the program items on stage are obviously about a greener way forward for the industry. We asked Dennis if sports industry producers shouldn’t be perfect partners.
“Absolutely, in outdoor and sports there are perfect partners for us because these are manufacturers who traditionally use a lot of polyethylene when making clothes, shoes and sleeping bags. We have talked to several players in the sports industry,” says Nobelius, who does not want to say more about that detail yet.
“We are in the process of signing our first cooperation agreements with brands where the entire production chain is intact. From them collecting the garments in their stores, for example, to us grinding down the polyester, producing new granules and finally being able to deliver the recycled polyester yarn to the customer. This production chain should be up and running by the end of 2025”, says Nobelius, revealing that polyester may just be the beginning for Syre. The company has bigger ambitions for its factories.
”Once the mills deliver polyether yarns to our customers, we have the ambition to move on to other textiles. We want to become a textile powerhouse. We could recycle cotton, bamboo or other materials in the same way, in the same factories,” Nobelius concludes.
