TEXTILES.ORG
Recycling Powerhouse Ltd. was established this July to industrialize, standardize and scale textile recycling. Based in Switzerland, the venture will operate a franchise-driven business model that enables the production of high-quality, certified recycled yarns. The project is supported by these partners:
- Rieter Group, a Swiss system supplier for natural and man-made fibers
- Säntis Textiles, a Swiss textile engineering company
- Valvan, a Belgian sorting technology company
The global textile industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Rising volumes of textile waste, increasing regulatory pressure and growing demand for sustainable products are accelerating the need for scalable circular solutions. Textile-to-textile recycling is not new, yet less than 1 percent of used textiles are recycled back into new ones. This is primarily due to technological complexity, the availability of low-cost virgin materials and often fragmented, hard-to-verify recycling claims in the market.
Over the coming years, Recycling Powerhouse intends to industrialize, standardize and scale textile recycling by establishing a global network of textile recycling plants capable of converting post- and pre-consumer textile waste into certified recycled yarns on an unprecedented industrial scale.
The company will act as a global integrator and franchisor across the textile recycling value chain, providing standardized recycling concepts, technologies, operating procedures, digital solutions, audit services and technical support to franchise partners worldwide.
Franchise partners will gain access to the company’s proven recycling solutions, engineering know-how, training programs and operational support systems. Yarns produced by franchisees will be marketed under an established brand. The company will ensure quality through auditing, certification and full end-to-end traceability across the value chain.
As part of this venture, Rieter is contributing its tearing and spinning expertise for short-staple fibers. The tearing machine converts fabric clips into fibers preserving fiber quality far better than conventional technologies—a critical factor in enabling industrial-scale recycling and high-quality yarn production. The tearing machine complements Rieter’s end-to-end spinning systems technology.
Valvan, a global leader in sorting technology, contributes leading textile sorting equipment and know-how, including the automated and AI-based textile sorting machine Fibersort, as well as Trimclean, a system designed to prepare fabric clips for tearing.
The first recycling blueprint facility and franchise operation will launch in early 2027 in Qatar in cooperation with Suhail Industrial Holding Group. Suhail is a leader in the recycling of metals, steel and plastic in the Middle East and other regions, and with this move is extending its operations into textile recycling.
The facility will serve as a global reference model, demonstrating how industrial-scale textile recycling can become commercially viable while supporting circular economy goals. Suhail Industrial Holding Group is already planning additional plants worldwide, with the ambition to become a global leader in textile recycling.
Noel Norking, managing director of Recycling Powerhouse, says, “Our mission is to make textile recycling simple, scalable and accessible to investors, so they can turn the textile industry’s tectonic shifts into monumental opportunity while helping to solve the world’s growing textile waste problem.”