Innovation Continues in 2024 with Quick Pace
Throughout 2024 there has been an acceleration in approaches to the regeneration of synthetic fibers at industrial scale – and especially PET polyester. Fantastic work has also continued in developing natural fibers and biopolymers as the raw materials for new circular supply chains, but the growth of such alternatives to PET and other synthetics will only go some way to meeting overall future demand. The total consumption of all fibers by the global textiles industry is forecasted to climb from 120 million tons in 2023 to 140 million tons by 2030, and at present polyesters, largely PET, account for an estimated 81 million tons of all production.
CiCLO Additive
Alongside schemes for taking both waste PET fabrics and plastics back to polymers and monomers as new raw materials, some true alternatives have also arisen, such as the CiCLO additive of Intrinsic Advanced Materials/Parkdale Mills.
CiCLO is an additive that is applied at the fiber extrusion stage of production to enable the accelerated biodegradation of synthetic fibers. It creates countless biodegradable spots in the matrix of the polymer that enables microbes that naturally exist in certain environments to break down the materials just like they do with natural fibers. All that remains are natural biogases and biomass. The mechanism is only activated under conditions that allow for biodegradation and they will not prematurely deteriorate while in storage or use, just like biodegradable fabrics made from natural fibers like cotton and wool.
Long-term studies have proven that CiCLO PET and also nylon fabrics biodegrade at greatly accelerated rates compared to such fibers without them.
Parkdale Mills has rapidly established a network of over 50 certified fiber and yarn manufacturers to ensure quality assurance and traceability in the supply of CiCLO products and such has been the interest in CiCLO, that Intrinsic co-founder Andrea Ferris has predicted that non-biodegradable PET will be extinct within a decade.
Synthetic Alternatives
OceanSafe, based in Berne, Switzerland, has also been making progress in 2024 with its naNea polymer, as a next generation replacement for PET polyester.
While still itself a synthetic, naNea is inherently biodegradable in water, soil and landfill. In ocean water, 93% of it will biodegrade in just 99 days and it is currently the first and only synthetic material to date to have received the stringent Cradle-to-Cradle Gold certification.
OceanSafe’s polymer is already being turned into fibers and yarns by an extensive list of partners. The resulting fabrics have all the favorable processing and performance properties of PET, yet are circular, biodegradable, compostable and toxin-free. They are also high performing, durable and highly scalable, and as volumes go up, the price for naNea will only come down.
The polymer is a drop-in solution for PET manufacturers and fibers and yarns being made from it can be fully woven or knitted and dyed and finished conventionally.
Compostable Celys
Intimiti Australia has meanwhile been attracting attention with Celys, a certified compostable polyester fiber which is 95.4% compostable in 179 days under industrial composting conditions, as a result of a third chemical monomer introduced into its molecular structure during the polymerization process.
The company has inserted easily hydrolysable and easy-to-break-down ester linkages into the polymer backbone of Celys fiber, to facilitate hydrolyzation and greatly accelerate the biodegradation rate. After biodegradation, all that remains is carbon dioxide, water and biomass.
Fabric properties achievable with Celys include a soft cotton-like touch, low pilling, hydrophilicity, low-temperature dyeing, natural wicking and breathability, and quick drying.
Ambercycle
It is in the area of the chemical recycling of synthetic fibers, however, and primarily PET, that the biggest impact will be made in the years to 2030.
In August, for example, Shinkong Synthetic Fibers, a global polyester manufacturer headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, announced a strategic $10 million investment in Ambercycle’s first commercial plant for producing its cycora polyester made from PET waste.
The investment builds on three years of collaboration on Ambercycle’s molecular regeneration technology, with Shinkong providing extensive experience in the premium polyester market.
Ambercycle expects to commence operations at its new industrial facility, with an as-yet unspecified location or capacity, in 2026.
In June 2024, Hyosung became the first manufacturer in South Korea to introduce Ambercycle’s cycora into supply chains and in the same month, MAS Holdings, a global apparel manufacturing and tech conglomerate headquartered in Sri Lanka, negotiated a three-year off-take agreement for cycora.
Inditex, the Spanish owner of the leading Zara brand, has signed a three-year agreement to buy a significant portion of the annual production of Ambercycle’s cycora with a value of more than €70 million.
Eastman Methanolysis
Four major methods for reverse engineering PET waste back into its monomer building blocks – methanolysis, glycolysis, hydrolysis and enzymatic recovery – are also rapidly being industrialized.
Methanolysis is based on the treatment of polyester polymers with methanol at relatively high temperatures of between 180-280°C and pressures of 20-40 atm, which leads to the formation of the constituent monomers dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and ethylene glycol.
Making the fastest progress here is Eastman, which in March announced its second molecular recycling plant for hard-to-recycle PET waste will be located in Longview, Texas.
The first plant, at its headquarters in Kingsport, Tennessee, also began initial production in March and is already generating revenue and is on target to earn around $75 million for the company in 2024.
The company’s methanolysis technology is said to break the waste down into the monomer building blocks for polyester that can be used again without compromising performance in a material-to-material high-yield loop.
The Kingsport and Longview plants are aimed at meeting Eastman’s ambitious goals of recycling 125,000 tons of polyester by next year, and double that volume by 2030.
In January 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron and Eastman CEO Mark Costa jointly announced Eastman’s plan to invest up to $1 billion in a material-to-material molecular recycling facility in Normandy, France. The site will also recycle up to 110,000 tons of hard-to-recycle polyester waste by 2028.
Loop Industries
Loop Industries owns patented and proprietary methanolysis technology that depolymerizes PET plastic and polyester fiber waste, including plastic bottles and packaging, carpets and textiles of any color, transparency or condition and even ocean plastics that have been degraded by the sun and salt. The resulting monomers are filtered, purified and polymerized to create virgin-quality PET resins suitable for use in food-grade packaging and as polyester fibers.
In January 2024, UK-headquartered investment firm Reed Management announced financing of $66 million to enable Loop Industries to proceed with its plans to construct a recycling plant in Saint-Avold, France, with an annual capacity of 70,000 tons.
In May, Loop Industries further announced a joint venture with Ester Industries to establish a $165 million Infinite Loop plant to recycle dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) from PET waste in India.
Glycolysis
In the glycolysis process, high molecular weight polyester is treated with a glycol such as ethylene glycol to recover polyester monomers for new products.
Making big waves in this field is Syre, a new company based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, which launched in March 2024, and by May 2024 had secured a $100 million Series A funding package.
Supported by an offtake supply agreement with H&M, Syre plans to establish multiple plants producing circular polyester across the globe.
The funding round was led by founding investor TPG Rise Climate along with an additional investment from H&M and strategic partners Giant Ventures, IMAS Foundation, Norrsken VC and Volvo.
It will finance the construction of a blueprint plant in the USA which will be up and running later before the end of 2024, as well as preparations for the first two gigascale textile-to-textile recycling plants. Syre has shortlisted Vietnam and Portugal or Spain as the locations for its first two plants.
The equity funding will further allow Syre to fully acquire the patented technology of North Carolina-based Premirr that is the centerpiece of the company’s textile-to-textile recycling solution.
Hydrolysis
Hydrolysis involves the use of water to break the ester bonds of polymers down into their constituent monomers. Hydrolysis monomer recovery processes have been developed for both PET and for polyamide.
Danville, Virginia-headquartered new fiber tech pioneer Circ is at technology readiness level (TRL) 7 and aiming to rapidly get to industrial scale with its process that can accommodate polycotton material in any blend ratio and any color, including post-consumer waste, as demonstrated through its partnership with Patagonia.
Its IP begins with a hydrothermal reaction initially developed for biofuels and now adapted for textiles.
In the process, the polyester is broken down through depolymerization by hydrolysis, when the fiber separation also occurs. When the polyester is broken down into monomers it dissolves into the liquid and results in two streams – the solid stream with just the cotton that’s left over and the liquid stream, which not only contains the polymers but also the dyes, finishing chemistries and coatings.
The cotton cellulose is further tuned so that it can be used in existing processes for manmade cellulosic fibers and from the liquid there is extraction and purification of the monomers, including the PTA (purified terephthalic acid).
“We’ve developed a purification method working with Professor Alan Myers of MIT which we’re very proud of because 99.9% purity here won’t necessarily work,” explains the company’s president and CEO Peter Majeranowski. “You have to make sure you screen out certain impurities that would prevent the PTA – which makes up roughly 70% by weight of polyester – from repolymerizing.”
Also operating recycling plants with hydrolytic processes currently at pilot scale, but with scale-up ambitions, are DePoly (Sion, Switzerland), Gr3n (Lugano, Switzerland) and RevolPet (Braunschweig, Germany).
On the polyamide side, Italy’s Aquafil, headquartered in Arco (Trento) Italy, has a well-established plant for recycling carpets and fishing nets into new polyamide monomers in Slovenia, with an annual capacity of 35,000 tons. Recycled products are marketed under Aquafil’s Econyl brand.
Enzymatic Recycling
Carbios has established a solvent-free enzymatic depolymerization process for recycling polyester and is currently constructing a €54 billion plant in Longlaville, in the Grand-Est region of France. This
is expected to start delivering significant quantities of new recycled feedstocks in 2026.
Carbios is developing a licensing model for the technology which is already bearing fruit.
In July 2024, Carbios signed an agreement with Zhink Group to establish a new recycling plant in China. The two companies are planning a long-term partnership beginning with a first
licensing contract to build a plant with a minimum annual processing capacity of 50,000 tons of prepared polyester waste. China is the world’s largest PET producer and also currently accounts for 78% of all PET transformed into r-PET, including PET bottles.
In August SASA of Turkey entered discussions with Carbios to license a polyester biorecycling facility with an annual capacity of 100,000 tons that it will build and operate at Adana site.
A new $1.5 billion SASA Polyester plant for PTA is poised to come on stream this year in Adana, with an annual capacity of 1,750,000 tons.
This will instantly position Turkey as a net exporter of polyester, rather than a net importer. SASA has pointed out that raw materials self-reliance is how both South Korea and China strengthened, stabilized and significantly grew their textile industries.
Milestone
In a significant textile industry breakthrough reported in October, Carbios and its fiber-to-fiber consortium brand partners On, Patagonia, Puma, PVH and Salomon, unveiled a plain, white polyester t-shirt that has been produced from 100% mixed and colored textile waste.
The t-shirt’s production began with all consortium members supplying rolls and production cutting scraps to Carbios in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The waste consisted of mixed blends of polyester with cotton and/or elastane, as well as various treatments such as durable water repellents and dyes, making them extremely complex to recycle using conventional methods.
The collected waste was deconstructed into its original PTA and MEG monomers at the Carbios pilot facility.
The resulting monomers were then repolymerized, spun into yarn and woven into new fabric by external partners, demonstrating their seamless integration into existing manufacturing processes.
The resulting t-shirt made from 100% textile waste meets the quality standards and sustainability objectives of the apparel brands of the consortium.
Lycra EcoMade
Finally, elastane, however valuable in providing stretch and comfort in garments, has been identified as a significant obstacle to many recycling operations, but in the first half of 2025, The Lycra Company will launch large-scale production of a new renewable elastane – Lycra EcoMade.
Bio-derived Lycra EcoMade fiber is made with 70% renewable content and certified under the USDA Bio-Preferred program. Garments and fabrics made with it deliver equivalent performance to those made with original Lycra fiber, and no re-engineering of fabrics, processes or garment patterns is required.
“There’s no need to sacrifice performance for renewable content with bio-derived Lycra EcoMade,” says Nicolas Banyols, chief commercial officer of The Lycra Company. “We are committed to transitioning to renewable resources as a key part of our sustainability strategy and it can help brands and retailers reduce their environmental impact too.”
