10 months ago
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The world’s biggest textile-to-textile recycler, based on volume, Sweden-based Renewcell filed for bankruptcy on February 25. But the story of its demise started much earlier and points to wider issues within the fashion industry and its lack of readiness to tackle post-consumer material innovation.
Renewcell’s business model was based on taking in discarded clothing and cotton from brands and turning it into Circulose, which could then be used to make new clothing items. The company had large clients, including H&M, Inditex, Levi’s, PVH and Bestseller, to which it supplied its Circulose from the items that the brands sent in. Apart from PR statements, none of the brands agreed to comment on this story. In most recent developments, as of March 6, H&M is now launching its own textile-to-textile recycler called Syre, with manufacturing set to take place in the U.S.
Renewcell was founded in 2012 and got its big break in 2019 when it became the first commercially available company doing textile-to-textile recycling. It IPO’ed in November of 2020, and that is where many of its problems began, according to industry sources.
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