Syntetica, a deeptech company developing recycling
technology for complex textile waste, has raised $30 million in a Series A
funding round to scale its nylon recycling platform and bring its technology to
industrial production.
The round was led by the Ecotechnologies 2 fund, managed on
behalf of the French government by Bpifrance, with participation from SWEN
Capital Partners, lululemon, MAS Holdings, existing investor EQT Ventures, and
the family offices of Peugeot, Etam and Indorama Venture’s largest shareholder.
The company also received support from public institutions, including Bpifrance
and the European Innovation Council.
Founded by Marco Bertone and Louis Monsigny, Syntetica has
developed a patented process capable of recycling both Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6
from mixed textile waste in a single process. By eliminating the need to
separate different nylon types before recycling, the technology addresses one
of the industry’s key technical barriers to recovering valuable materials from
post-consumer textile waste.
The company is already working with brands including
Victoria’s Secret and Etam, alongside a growing number of global apparel
companies, as demand for circular materials continues to increase. Unlike
conventional recycling technologies that primarily process clean manufacturing
waste, Syntetica’s platform is designed to recover materials from post-consumer
textiles, which account for the majority of textile waste.
Commenting on the investment, co-founder and CEO Marco
Bertone said the funding marks an important step in bringing the company’s
recycling technology from the laboratory to commercial-scale manufacturing:
For decades, mixed nylon waste has been considered
too complex and too expensive to recycle at scale. We have shown that it is
possible to recover high-value materials from the waste streams the industry
has historically written off.
The funding will support the construction of Syntetica’s
first commercial demonstration facility in France, developed in partnership
with Michelin’s Centre for Sustainable Materials in Clermont-Ferrand. The plant
will transition the company’s technology from laboratory scale to industrial
production, with the capacity to process hundreds of tonnes of textile waste
each year.
Looking ahead, Syntetica plans to expand its technology
platform beyond nylon into additional materials and applications, including the
textiles, automotive and speciality chemicals sectors, as it seeks to
strengthen circular material supply chains across Europe.