If 2024 was a year to forget in the international next-generation or next-generation fiber sector, 2025 has been the year of the international fashion industry’s reaction to support these projects. The year has been marked by an incessant trickle of corporate operations, financing rounds and agreements between large companies in the sector and innovative start-ups with which to fortify these projects through long-term purchase commitments, a fundamental measure to guarantee the viability of these new businesses.
If Renewcell was the name of 2024, with a crisis that brought to the surface the weaknesses of next gen fiber projects, in 2025 it has been replaced by a long list of promising news linked to names such as Circ, Recover, Syre, Reju, Epoch, Eeden, Intecsa or Ambercycle. There have also been, however, negative protagonists, such as Texaid or Spinnova, which have experienced difficulties, and the Spanish Ananas Anam, manufacturer of Piñatex, which in October went into insolvency and is facing liquidation.
The year 2025 has also been the year in which the real scaling-up process of many of these projects has begun, as they move forward with plans to activate their first factories with which to begin to achieve the volume and economies of scale required by the sector to obtain sustainable fiber at affordable prices.
One of the most outstanding projects of the year has been that of Syre. The Swedish company, backed by H&M, Nike, Gap, Target and others through material purchase commitments, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Vietnamese government in early May to build its first production plant. At the end of the year, Syre announced the start of a financing round that could be historic for the next gen, with the aim of raising between $500 million and $700 million to launch this factory from 2027.
France’s Reju, which specializes in textile recycling, announced the same month the construction of its first large-scale plant in the Netherlands, with the aim of reaching a capacity to recycle the equivalent of 300 million items per year.
Last year saw the launch of the real scaling-up process for many of these projects
While Reju did not put a figure on the amount of investment required for this project, the U.S.-based Circ did, putting the funds required to start up a recycling plant in northern France at $450 million. Owned by Inditex, Circ specializes in the recycling of polyester and cotton fibers and expects its first production facility to come on stream in 2028 with a processing capacity of 70,000 metric tons of fiber per year. In March, Circ had raised €25 million in a financing round in which the Spanish fashion giant participated.
Other large rounds were led by the British company Epoch, in which Inditex also participates and which raised 18.3 million euros in March, and the German company Eeden, which specializes in textile recycling of blends and raised another 18 million euros at the end of April. Another German group, the polyester recycling specialist Matterr, received an injection from the Danish group Bestseller, in addition to a grant of 30 million euros from the European Union to start up its first processing plant.
Another Spanish company, Coleo, also specialized in textile waste management and recycling, signed in November the entry into its capital of the Repsol Foundation, which has taken a 14% stake in the capital of Coleo Network, the group’s company that manages and controls the company’s network of textile waste treatment plants.
Another Spanish group, Texlimca, announced a project to invest six million euros to start up a new recycling plant in Spain, which will be operational as of December 2026. Recover, for its part, has teamed up with Textil Santanderina and TMG to launch a new line of business: the Spanish company is putting 50 different fabrics and a line of final garments on the market.
Circulose, Renewcell’s new name, reactivated its plans after being saved from bankruptcy in the previous year. In April, the Chinese group Yibin Grace opened a cellulosic-based waste textile recycling plant in China using Circulose technology. The plant has an initial production capacity of 1,500 tons of fiber per year, but aims to reach 60,000 tons in two years.
Fiber purchase commitments have also come from groups such as Ambercycle with Ganni, Circ with Arvind and Acegreen, and Circulose with H&M and C&A, among many others.