New funds for textile-to-textile recycling technology
Circ Technology, a company developing a recycling process for polycotton blends, has announced that it has raised $25 million. These funds will be used, it said, to accelerate scaling up and delivery of its first consumer products to market.
New investors that are backing the Danville, Virginia-based company include ecommerce retailer Zalando, labelling and digital identification specialist Avery Dennison, and Korean apparel manufacturer Youngone. This is an extension of a Series B round that raised $30 million for Circ last July. It saw Inditex and Milliken add their names to the list of company’s investors, along with Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Patagonia and Marubeni, a diversified Japanese conglomerate whose operations include chemicals, are other apparel industry companies that have supported Circ, which was formerly known as Tyton Biosciences.
Circ claims that its technology “is uniquely capable of separating and recovering mixed polymer streams, specifically any blend of polyester and cotton, which account for most fabrics manufactured”. It has developed a hydrothermal process that extracts purified terephthalic acid, or PTA (a building block for polyester) from polyester and cellulose from cotton. The first can be used to make new polyester, the second to make a manmade cellulose fibre such as viscose.
CEO Peter Majeranowski commented: “Transforming the fashion economy requires leadership from influential players in the textile industry, the financial community, as well as technology innovators. With each funding round and expansion in our partner base, we become more capable of ending the costly and preventable cycle of garment waste.”
