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ABB and Swedish textile impact company Syre have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore how automation, electrification, and digital technologies can support the development of Syre’s first industrial-scale textile-to-textile recycling facility in Gia Lai province, Vietnam.
The exploratory collaboration provides a framework to assess how advanced process control, quality optimization, and electrical infrastructure can enable safe, efficient, and scalable production of circular polyester.
Under the agreement, ABB and Syre will evaluate how ABB’s distributed control systems, digital industrial software, and electrification portfolio can be tailored to the specific chemical and mechanical demands of polyester recycling.
Feedstock Diversification: The proposed plant in Gia Lai is designed to process both end-of-life textiles and post-industrial waste, converting them into high-purity circular polyethylene terephthalate (PET) chips.
Fossil Displacement: By producing circular polyester at scale, the facility aims to reduce reliance on virgin fossil inputs, minimize carbon intensity, and prevent textile waste from entering landfills or incinerators.
Engineering Alignment: The joint technology assessment will take place alongside the detailed engineering phase of Syre’s first production facility.
Since its public launch, Syre established a research and development facility alongside a pilot production line in Mebane, North Carolina, successfully achieving multi-ton production of circular PET chips. With commercial viability demonstrated, the focus has shifted toward full-scale industrial execution, with construction of the Vietnam facility targeted to begin in 2027.
“This agreement reflects ABB’s role in supporting emerging industrial applications where automation and electrification can enable greater resource efficiency. Together with Syre, we will explore how our experience in fibre processing, chemicals and advanced process industries can be applied to polyester recycling. We’re excited to discover what’s possible as we embark on this new technological collaboration.”
— Wilson Monteiro, Global Business Line Manager for Pulp, Paper and Fiber, ABB Process Industries
“As we now move into full industrial deployment, partnerships like this become critical. Industrialising textile-to-textile recycling is a complex undertaking, and while strong customer demand is essential, it must be matched with best-in-class industrial partners. ABB brings exactly the depth of expertise and execution capability needed, they are a cornerstone of the industrial ecosystem we are building.”
— Dennis Nobelius, CEO of Syre
The commercial scaling of textile-to-textile recycling, process automation for fiber-to-fiber sorting and depolymerization, and global feedstock supply chain logistics will be primary focus areas at the upcoming Textile Recycling Focus Day.
Covestro has officially announced its participation in Kollert, a publicly funded, interdisciplinary research consortium in Germany dedicated to developing recyclable product concepts for automotive lighting, mechatronics, and electronic components.
Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) under the CircularGlowUp framework and supervised by the Karlsruhe Project Management Agency (PTKA), the three-year project runs from June 2026 to May 2029 with a total funding volume of €4.371 million.
The European Union’s landmark Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) has officially entered into application across all EU Member States. Establishing a single harmonized legal framework for the EU Single Market, the PPWR replaces fragmented national rules to streamline compliance for cross-border businesses, accelerate waste reduction, and lower reliance on imported virgin raw materials.
A team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has engineered a recyclable yarn made from polyethylene, offering a scalable solution to the global challenge of textile waste. Detailed in ACS Materials Letters, the research was led by Svetlana Boriskina, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, alongside first author SeongHyeon Kim and co-authors Duo Xu, Volodymyr Korolovych, Domingo Flores-Hernandez, Kaniz Moriam, and Daniel Braconnier.
The MIT team demonstrated that garments crafted from the engineered yarn can be melted down at the end of their lifecycle and respun into fresh fiber or molded into solid plastic hardware, such as buttons and belt buckles.