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Technip, IBM, Under Armour launch Reju to tackle plastic fibre waste

A coalition of organisations like the engineering and technology company Technip Energies, US fashion brand Under Armour and software solutions company IBM, have launched an innovative company called Reju, focused on creating new solutions at scale for plastic fibre waste from textiles that end up in landfills.

Former Under Armour CEO and apparel industry veteran Patrik Frisk is all set to head the new company Reju, along with Alain Poincheval, COO and senior executive with Technip Energies.

Reju is focused on PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) recycling (rPET) of textiles that will leverage the technology co-developed in joint-venture with IBM and Under Armour as well as Technip Energies’ global engineering and technology integration expertise.

Technip Energies explained that the company has been working with IBM and Under Armour since 2021 in a joint venture to bring VolCat, an IBM technology for rejuvenating waste PET packaging and polyester, to an industrial scale.

VolCat works by allowing the selective breakdown of polymers which Technip added will be used by Reju to address hard-to-recycle polyester garments and PET packaging lost to the waste stream today.

Technip believes with this technology acting as a molecular sorted, PET could be "regenerated infinitely."

Arnaud Pieton, CEO of Technip Energies, noted that the only hurdle in textile recycling was the lack of an "economical solution on an industrial scale."

Pieton continued: "Globally, less than 1% of PET textiles waste is recycled today. This means that most textiles end up as waste in landfills when they could be repeatedly reused in new clothes. For the first time in this domain, a unique scalable technology is directly associated with a scalability expert like Technip Energies. Reju will deliver the promise of economical textile recycling, and we are proud to extend our role as an active agent of circularity."

CEO of Reju Patrik Frisk, said: "We have the opportunity to establish a genuine circular ecosystem for textile recycling and invite collaboration across the entire value chain, encompassing collectors and sorters, chemical companies, and the apparel industry. Through the creation of Reju, we are laying the groundwork for an ecosystem that can profoundly transform the PET textile industry, and brings us closer to a world that has moved past pollution."

Reju's demonstration plant was inaugurated in September at the Technip Energies Frankfurt Research Centre with the facility expected to come to stream in 2024.