ReHubs, the Brussels-based European alliance for textile-to-textile recycling, has appointed Béatrice Moureaux as Chief Executive Officer, effective from the announcement on October 5, 2026. She succeeds Robert van de Kerkhof, who held the role on an interim basis and will remain Chairman of the Board through the transition.

Moureaux is not a newcomer to the organisation. She has served as Board Advisor to ReHubs since December 2025, working directly with the board, team and members on strategy and projects. Her background spans more than 25 years across technical textiles, advanced fibres, nonwovens and circular innovation — a profile the alliance clearly weighed as it pushes into a harder economic phase of its mandate.

Why the appointment matters now

The leadership change lands at a difficult point for Europe's textile circularity transition. The core problem is commercial, not technical: recyclers lack the certainty of demand needed to justify investment in capacity, while brands hesitate to commit volumes without reliable and competitively priced supplies of recycled fibres.

ReHubs positions its strategy squarely against this supply-demand deadlock. As a membership organisation, it pulls together companies from across the textile value chain to improve conditions for investment and support the build-out of a viable textile-to-textile recycling industry in Europe.

"I'm proud to take on the role of CEO at such an important moment for ReHubs and our industry," Moureaux said. "The road ahead will be challenging, and breaking the supply-demand deadlock to scale textile-to-textile recycling in Europe will require an openness to collaboration across the value chain and the right conditions for investment."

What the economics work shows

The alliance's recent report with Boston Consulting Group put the economics of textile-to-textile recycling under scrutiny — specifically the conditions required to attract investment and build capacity in Europe. ReHubs is now working with members to identify where targeted interventions could create a functioning market for recycled textiles, moving the debate beyond technology readiness toward unit economics and offtake certainty.

That framing was echoed by Kasper Damsø of NewRetex, ReHubs Co-Chair. "We have technologies today that can improve how textiles are sorted and recycled, but technology alone will not create a circular system," he said. "All steps along the value chain need to develop together."

Policy pressure and EPR

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes are emerging as the main policy lever, and ReHubs' leadership sees both the opportunity and the execution risk. Véronique Allaire Spitzer of Refashion, the French producer responsibility organisation and ReHubs Co-Chair, noted that EPR "is a powerful lever to translate ambition into action, but its success depends on practical solutions and close collaboration across the value chain."

For sourcing and supply-chain teams, the signal is that recycled-fibre availability in Europe will depend less on new sorting or recycling technologies — which already exist — and more on whether brands can aggregate demand at volumes that let recyclers finance capacity.

Van de Kerkhof, who also leads PEPPER-i2, said the past few years made clear that "scaling textile-to-textile recycling is not something any technology or organisation can achieve alone," adding that ReHubs has pushed questions of economics, investment and scale onto the industry agenda.

Under Moureaux, the alliance's next deliverable will be converting its BCG-backed economic analysis into concrete interventions with members — work that will show whether Europe's recycled-textile market can move from pilot volumes to investable capacity.