Worn Again announces latest pilot plant

NOTTINGHAM – Worn Again Technologies has announced plans to build a new textile recycling demo plant in Winterthur, Switzerland. The company, which was established in 2009, said its plant will “showcase its ground-breaking polymer processing technologies for textile recycling.” Worn Again said the plant will have the capacity to, “prevent 1’000 tonnes of textiles being incinerated every year, paving the way for industrial-scale operations.”

Worn Again Technologies’ demonstration plant will be constructed near to one of the startup’s technology partners, Sulzer Chemtech, in Winterthur, Switzerland. The company said this, “represents a crucial step towards upscaling and commercializing the company’s recycling process technology.”

In particular, Worn Again said the new industrial-scale infrastructure will help, “validate the closed-loop chemical recycling solution that has been developed by Worn Again Technologies and its strategic partners.”

This process obtains polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and cellulose from non-reusable, hard-to-recycle textiles that constitute post-industrial and post-consumer waste. Additionally, the process purifies the products by removing dyes, contaminants and impurities, a step forward from traditional recycling methods. As such, Worn Again claims this, “delivers high-quality, virgin-like materials that can be reintroduced into supply chains to become new fibers, textiles and other products.

Erik Koep, CEO at Worn Again Technologies, said: “We are excited to be taking the next step in making reliable, high-performance textile recycling a reality. The construction and operation of this demonstration plant are the next major milestones in achieving our vision for textile circularity. We look forward to starting operations soon and see this as the first plant in a global network of processing facilities.”

Torsten Wintergerste, chairman of Worn Again Technologies, added: “We are delighted to see our technologies being leveraged to create a state-of-the-art textile recycling plant. Building it in Switzerland gives Worn Again Technologies direct access to Sulzer Chemtech’s global R&D facilities and the Swiss textile industry. We will build an ecosystem of partners around this demo plant and drive forward the creation of a circular economy of textiles. Switzerland is an ideal location for Worn Again to realize the demonstration plant with all stakeholders in the shortest time period possible.”

We’ve followed Worn Again for the best part of a decade. The business appears to be in s perpetual state of pilot plants/validating its technology and it does seem odd that a company which was formed as far back as 2009 can still describe itself as a start-up.

In 2020, Worn Again launched a pilot plant in Teesside, North East England which the business said was, “designed to validate and develop its proprietary process.”

What happened to this? When we asked the company’s founder Cyndi Rhoades, she said the plant is now being “relocated to Nottingham for further R&D.” She also said the demo plant in Switzerland, “is our next key scale up milestone.”

We shall see.