Syntetica secures 30 million dollars in funding, Lululemon among investors

French textile recycling company Syntetica has closed on a 30 million dollar Series A funding round, with backing from Lululemon, Sri Lanka’s MAS Holdings, and the family offices of Etam and Peugeot, among others.

The firm said the funding will support the construction of its first commercial demonstration facility in France, where it plans to scale its technology to industrial production, with the goal of processing hundreds of tonnes of textile waste annually.

Syntetica has developed a proprietary solution to recycle both Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6, the two most common forms of nylon, from mixed textile waste, addressing an industry-wide technical challenge of identifying and separating different nylon types.

The company, citing a report by Textile Exchange, said that despite an increase in nylon production, recycled nylon still only accounts for around 2 percent of the nylon market due to these barriers.

Syntetica intends to tackle this problem by building new industrial supply chains around materials like nylon that already exist in Europe. While post-consumer nylon waste is the primary focus, the company said it plans to expand its platform into additional materials and applications over time.

Brands such as Victoria’s Secret and Etam are already working with the company on this process.

In a statement, co-founder and CEO, Marco Bertone, said that while mixed nylon waste had previously been deemed “too complex and too expensive to recycle at scale”, Syntetica has “shown that it is possible to recover high-value materials from the waste streams the industry has historically written off”.

Bertone continued: “This funding allows us to move from breakthrough chemistry to industrial reality and accelerate the transition to more circular materials.”

The round was led by Ecotechnologies 2 fund, which is managed on behalf of the French government by Bpifrance, an organisation that supports businesses by financing their innovation and international expansion.

The initiative is supported by a 300 million euro funding under the France 2030 programme, which strives to bring lasting transformation to key sectors and position the country as a “leader in the world of tomorrow”.