What We Can Learn From Renewcell’s Financial Struggles

Ordinarily, I subscribe to the belief that in sustainability discussions, opinions are redundant; we should lean on the science. But, yesterday a conflation of both was enlisted in an outcry for answers as to why Renewcell, fashion’s leading textile-to-textile recycling technology, had filed for bankruptcy. The science (and resulting technology) is solid; the route to profitability less so. And it’s the latter that really matters.

Yes, Renewcell’s advanced textile recycling process works—I saw it with my own eyes at the inaugural launch in Sweden of their first (and now painfully numbered) Renewcell 1. But I wondered, from inception, how a facility in Sweden could help fashion brands—Renewcell’s target customer—to solve the problem they seemed to care about most: recycling post-consumer waste. ‘Old jeans turned into new jeans’ was effectively the technology’s strap line, and a fair one in terms of the company’s ambition and technical potential. But the reality was that their advanced chemical recycling process—like all others of its kind—requires a highly specific waste input (at least 95% cotton, at the time I visited Renewcell 1); a need best met by post-industrial (off-cut waste) on factory floors in manufacturing countries, not discarded clothes from consumers.

My (curiosity-led and objective) question to Renewcell, Circ, Infinited Fiber and other similar technologies has always been: ‘since you require homogenous waste of a specific composition and quality, and in large and consistent volumes—conditions currently best met by post-industrial waste streams—why are your technologies in Europe and the U.S. where those needs cannot be met?’ And, ‘why aren’t you in the textile supply chain in Asia, alongside the factories who can provide your waste input, and purchase your recycled output?’ Why, I still wonder, is the hopes of textile-to-textile recycling hinged on fashion brands in the Global North with other priorities, who procure products from the supply chain in the Global South? Why isn’t the advancement of textile technologies being integrated into the supply-chain, since brands procure and sell finished goods, not fibres?

The answers have often been a combination of these: ‘the investors are investing here [in the global north]’; ‘the brands are here, so we’re here’, or ‘we can achieve our lowest carbon footprint here due to renewable energy’. Sweden offers abundant renewable energy, and that was certainly a factor for Renewcell. However, last week I revealed that India’s rapid transition to renewable energy will soon answer that need, but I guess we may never know if the overall business case for Renewcell stacks up there.

And here we come to the central challenge I observe with advanced chemical recycling technologies setting up shop outside of manufacturing hubs and outside of readily available feedstock reserves: absent infrastructure and supply chain integration. It’s a fact that the majority of the world’s textiles and clothes are made in Asia. Around half of all textiles are made in China. It’s also a fact that consumption in the Global North’s mature fashion markets is stagnating (as examined astutely by researcher Lutz Walter). Conversely, markets in Asia are set for rapid growth in step with the expanding middle class, particular China and India. India is the most promising hope for textile circularity, but this success depends on the viability for each stakeholder along that supply chain. This requirement for a ‘business case’ has been somewhat ignored in the commentary following Renewcell’s bankruptcy filing, where the financial faltering was reportedly due to ‘a lack of orders from brands’. This reluctance to place orders points to the absence of a business case for Renewcell’s recycled ‘Circulose’ fibers in the competitive and price-driven textile supply chain.

Renewcell’s business model placed the onus on brands to order its recycled ‘Circulose’ dissolving pulp, which is much like pieces of cardboard that are shipped to textile spinners in Asia, rehydrated to release the fibers and then mixed with other fibers like cotton. The combined fibers are then spun into yarns, before being sent to textile mills to be made into fabrics. Relying on brands to prioritise this manner of materials sourcing is about as far removed from their business expertise and motivations as you can get; precious few brands buy any fibers at all—most don’t even know where their fabrics are made, let alone their origin of the fibers that went into them. Instead, brands typically rely on their nearest (tier 1) garment manufacturers to source textiles on their behalf, and to handle all the costings to make the economies of scale and unit pricing work, on the brand’s behalf.

Consider this: a brand facing today’s tough economic outlook can either commit far in advance to sourcing a more expensive (but lower environmental impact) ingredient for future spinning into textiles in a volatile market, or, they can continue to ask their garment suppliers to source the ready-made cheaper equivalent in final textile form at the time they need it. The mistake here is to assume that if the science and tech stacks up, and the output is of high quality and low impact, it will succeed off the back of brands’ commitment and storytelling to consumers. In fact, a business case for buying the fiber must exist, and one that isn’t at odds with brands’ upholding their fiduciary duty to maximise profits for shareholders; the absence of orders for Renewcell’s Circulose indicates that this business case does not currently exist. And this is not only a shame and a sadness for the brilliant Renewcell team members, but also its supply chain—the factories and waste handlers in Bangladesh, Turkey and Kenya, who had agreements to sell and ship their waste to Renewcell, but now must search for another market for it, hurting their livelihoods.

Where there is an existing supply chain—end-to-end—there is infrastructure and operational data to evaluate the business case for textile-to-textile recycling technologies, without relying on sustainability storytelling, and hoping that planetary good will will trump economics and profit maximisation. Currently, without environmental imperatives driving decision-making, the only other ones are financial. A new, low impact material cannot rely on realignment of corporate morality in order to compete with, or displace, incumbents—this harsh truth is critical.

Experts in countries like India and Bangladesh who are sourcing fibers, spinning yarns, knitting and weaving fabrics and making garments at fixed unit prices in fluctuating markets, on behalf of brands, are likely best placed to evaluate and integrate new recycling technologies. There is already a well established mechanical textile recycling supply chain in India’s, for example, and the business case for building out advanced chemical recycling beyond this would be evaluated and demonstrated as a function of demand, volumes, technical feasibility, Capex and projected revenues within the textile economy that exists. This seems a logical next step for advanced recycling of textiles (and one I will evaluate in my next article).

Hopefully the next phases of textile-to-textile to recycling will be catalysed in the heart of the supply chain in Asia, where recent waste analysis by Fashion for Good and Canopy, and the establishment of India’s Re-START Alliance, shows hope for expansion of a viable circular textiles economy.