Reju signs six mills on two continents to prove regenerated polyester works

Reju has signed six textile mills across Europe and the Americas to turn regenerated polyester into finished, commercially viable fabrics, a step the Paris-based company needs before its planned industrial recycling network can sell anything.

The partners are A. Sampaio, RDD Textiles and Tintex Textiles in Portugal, FOV Fabrics in Sweden, Utenos Trikotažas in Lithuania and Swisstex Direct, which operates in Los Angeles and El Salvador. All six will test whether polyester recovered from post-consumer textile waste can run through existing manufacturing lines and meet brand performance requirements.

That question matters more than the press release suggests. Reju's chemical recycling process, based on technology originating from IBM Research, promises to return polyester to the supply chain without the quality degradation of mechanical recycling. Capacity, however, is only half the challenge. If regenerated fibre cannot be knitted, dyed and finished to specification at normal mill speeds, the entire upstream build-out stalls. These partnerships are, in effect, the qualification phase.

What does each mill bring?

The roster covers a deliberately broad manufacturing base:

• A. Sampaio (Portugal): more than 75 years in circular knitted fabrics.
• RDD Textiles (Portugal): knitted constructions, recycled and bio-based materials, advanced dyeing technologies.
• Tintex Textiles (Portugal): circular knits for fashion, activewear, underwear and loungewear, with lower-impact dyeing and finishing.
• FOV Fabrics (Sweden): high-performance woven textiles for technical and functional applications.
• Utenos Trikotažas (Lithuania): vertically integrated knitting and garment manufacturing.
• Swisstex Direct (US/El Salvador): knitting, dyeing, finishing and product development for apparel brands — the network's foothold in the Americas.

The spread signals intent: Reju is qualifying material across knit, woven, fashion and technical categories simultaneously, rather than proving one fabric class first.

Where will the recycled polyester come from?

Reju, owned by Technip Energies, is developing a network of Regeneration Hubs to process post-consumer polyester waste at industrial scale. The company has already named Rochester, New York, for its first North American hub and Lacq, France, for a further European facility. It has also secured €135 million in funding through the Dutch government's NIKI programme to support planned operations in the Netherlands.

The €135 million figure gives the plan some substance. So does the CEO's framing. Patrik Frisk said: "Every selected mill with whom we are working adds to our circular textile system." He added: "As plans for Reju's future Regeneration Hub network grow, so will our ability to deliver a consistent, high-quality regenerated polyester that manufacturers and brands can then build on."

Note the conditional. The hubs remain planned; the mill agreements are development collaborations, not offtake contracts, and no volumes, timelines or pricing have been disclosed. For sourcing teams weighing recycled-polyester options against established mechanically recycled supply, the practical test will be whether these six mills convert Reju's output into fabric that clears brand specs at competitive cost.

The next markers to watch are concrete: hub construction dates, certified output volumes and the first commercial fabric programs named by brands.