Syre receives new funding
Swedish textile-to-textile recycling start-up Syre, founded earlier this year, has finalised a new funding round raising $100 million. In addition to its first backers Vargas, a Stockholm-based greentech investment fund, and fashion retailer H&M Group, new investors include an Ikea foundation (IMAS) and Volvo Cars, along with Giant Ventures and Norrsken VC.
This equity funding will allow Syre to fully acquire a patented technology developed by Premirr, which it says is the centrepiece of its textile-to-textile recycling solution for polyester. “We completed a rigorous search and evaluation of 20+ polyester recycling technologies worldwide. That’s how we found Chris Luft and Matthew Parrott, founders of Premirr,” said Syre CEO Dennis Nobelius in the announcement. The company’s R&D hub is based in North Carolina, close to the Research Triangle Park where the technology was originally developed.
The funding round will further be used to finance the construction of a blueprint plant in the United States, which is expected to start operating later this year, as well as begin to prepare to establish two gigascale textile-to-textile recycling plants. Vietnam and the Iberian Peninsula have been shortlisted as possible locations for these first two plants. Earlier this year, the company said it planned to have 12 large-scale factories in operation within the next decade.
For an update on chemical recycling technologies for polyester, read our feature here.
Image courtesy of Syre
