Ambercycle looks to have received a game-changing boost in its bid to begin commercial-scale production of regenerated polyester fibres.

Regenerated polyester developer Ambercycle has entered into a new, strategic partnership with fashion group Inditex. Los Angeles-based Ambercycle takes end-of-life textiles and uses molecular regeneration technology to produce new polyester fibres from them for use in new garments. It uses the brand name Cycora for yarns and fabrics developed from the regenerated polyester.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Inditex will buy “a significant share” of the annual production of Cycora for a period of three years and the Spanish clothing group has said it will spend more than €70 million as part of the agreement. Initially, this money will allow Ambercycle to build its first commercial-scale production facility and it has said it aims to begin production at that new factory in 2025. Inditex will then aim to incorporate significant volumes of Cycora into its fashion collections in the three years that follow.

To demonstrate the potential that it believes Cycora has, Inditex has already developed a prototype capsule collection for its Zara Athleticz sports clothing line, with garments that contain up to 50% Cycora.

Ambercycle’s chief executive, Shay Sethi, says the company’s partnership with Inditex represents “a monumental leap forward” in the fashion industry’s quest to achieve “circularity at scale”.

An eco-system to build

The molecular regeneration technology it uses is chemistry that separates fibres from one another, and once the fibres are separated the next stage in the process is to purify and recover the raw materials, which can then reconstitute new yarns. The California-based company has told WSA that it has begun with a focus on polyester because this is the most-used fibre in fashion. Ambercycle insists that its technology is “a foundation on which a circular ecosystem can be built” and that it will be possible to use it “to regenerate all the different materials in our closet”.

It warns, however, that for this to happen, “extensive ecosystem development” will be necessary and it envisages four steps on this road. The first is obvious: you have to save clothes from landfill at end of life by collecting them for a much more worthwhile purpose.

Before the second step, you have to prepare these textiles for molecular regeneration by removing buttons, zippers and other hardware, and then shredding the material. The pieces of fabric go into reactors for purification, first separating (if the material construction contains a blend) cotton or spandex or other fibres from the polyester and then removing dyes, additives and other textile finishing products. The polyester fibres that emerge from this process are further purified at a molecular level and reconstituted into, Ambercycle insists, virgin-grade pellets.

From these pellets, partners will then be able to spin new yarns and produce Cycora fabrics for use in garments, as Inditex is intent on doing. And at the end of those new garments’ useful life, the fourth step on the road to establishing the eco-system that Ambercycle envisages is for the process to repeat itself.

Chemical reaction

“We predict that our regenerated polyester will offset close to half the emissions associated with virgin polyester production, once we reach commercial scale,” Ambercycle states. Counting also the carbon emissions avoided by averting incineration or dumping of clothes in landfill, it insists that the environmental benefits far outweigh any environmental plus that supporters of the current traditional system of using petroleum-based textiles might point to. Although it uses chemistry to produce its new raw materials, it chooses to use the term molecular regeneration to describe the process it has developed, distinguishing it from the chemical recycling practices already in place in many parts of the industry. For Ambercycle, chemical recycling implies high-temperature processes that have a higher environmental impact and produce lower-quality output. “Our process involves lower temperatures and places emphasis on producing high-quality, like-new material as the output,” the company insists. “As this space grows and innovations are introduced, we need terminology that distinguishes new technologies, based on their own attributes.” It believes its system for creating virgin-grade materials without downcycling, leading to new garments from old, merits the different name it has chosen.

A ‘de-risked’ scale-up

It has been using this technique in a pilot production facility it set up in 2021; this facility has the capacity to process textile waste that would have the equivalent volume of 15,000 T-shirts per day. Ambercycle calls this a “pre-commercial level of material”. It has developed the process as it has gone along, work that it says has “de-risked the scale-up” it is now preparing and has helped it design its first commercial plant, the building of which Inditex’s investment will make possible. The Los Angeles-based company says it plans to make an announcement about the new plant in the near future.

Sticking with its T-shirts metric, it says the move to a commercial-scale plant will take the volume of textile waste it can process each day from 15,000 T-shirts to 250,000. The feedstock supply it will secure to turn into Cycora yarns and fabrics will include garments of all kinds, of course. Post-industrial as well as post-consumer waste will be part of this picture. Apparel that consumers have worn is coming into the Ambercycle feedstock cycle through collections that brand partners are carrying out, as well as from stocks of unsold second-hand clothing.

The post-industrial material comes directly from garment manufacturers, typically in the form of factory scraps. “Up to 15% of textiles intended for clothing end up on factory floors as cut scraps,” the company states, “making this a valuable source of textile waste.”

It says its efforts are ongoing to build up the supply-chain partnerships that make this flow of materials possible and to improve sorting techniques. Its objective in building good relationships with these end-of-life textiles partners is to make the practice of putting the material to better use simpler and more mainstream, to make giving it a second life second nature. Downstream, it also has Cycora-producing relationships with two yarn manufacturers in Asia, Shinkong Synthetic Fibers Corporation and Far Eastern Group. Brand partners using the fabric in their products include Saucony, Pertex, Nemo Equipment, Bestseller and H&M. It can now add Inditex to this list. What Ambercycle wants is for Cycora to become “seamlessly integrated” into these companies’ production set-up.

Prototype running gear made from Cycora fabric for Zara Athleticz.  A multimillion euro investment from Inditex, and a commitment to use Cycora in its garments, will make commercial-scale production feasible faster for Ambercycle.
Credit: Inditex

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