Reju launches US textiles recycling lab

French textiles recycling start-up Reju has opened its first R&D centre in North America.

The Reju lab is located at the Advanced Materials and Catalysts Research Center in Conshohocken (Pennsylvania) is which is operated by parent company Technip Energies. The facility will accelerate the rollout of its recycling technologies and next-generation circular solutions.

Reju was founded in 2023 in Frankfurt, Germany where it operates a regeneration hub, recycling post-consumer textiles into Reju Polyester. The product’s recycled content is 100% traceable and has a 50% lower carbon footprint compared to virgin textiles.

Innovative process

To achieve top quality, Reju uses a proprietary, molecular-level chemical process to produce high-quality, virgin-grade polyester from discarded polyester garments. It follows these steps:

• Automated sorting and preparation:
  Reju partners with waste aggregators such as Nouvelles Fibres Textiles to process discarded textiles. Automated sorting technology identifies and separates polyester-rich clothing by colour and composition, while removing hard materials such as zippers, buttons and other contaminants.
• Dissolving and depolymerisation:
  The sorted textiles are shredded and put through a chemical process called glycolysis. Ethylene glycol and heat dissolve the tough bonds of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic. This breaks the long polyester molecular chains down into their base monomers.
• Purification:
  Because the chemical process targets polyester molecules, any dyes, pigments, embedded bacteria and other contaminants are filtered and washed out.
• Repolymerisation and spinning:
  Once the raw molecules are clean, they are rebuilt into a new polymer chain. This regenerated material is extruded into chips and spun into new, high-performance yarn.

Building future infrastructure

The new R&D centre has meant the relocation of Reju’s research team from IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. This is where Reju’s VolCat depolymerisation technology was first developed.

‘I’m excited to join such an innovative company and be part of the team driving this technology toward industrialisation, while building the infrastructure needed to make true post-consumer textile-to-textile recycling possible at scale,’ says Gregory Breyta, Reju’s director of research and development.

Activities at the new centre will span the entire development process from initial feasibility studies through kilogram-scale production. The work will focus on recycling, solutions for blended fabrics, and the development of new circular chemistry pathways, helping speed up experimentation and reduce the time needed to bring Reju’s innovations from concept to industrial application.

Additionally, the centre will support the development and validation of technologies intended for deployment at future regeneration hubs.

Scaling up globally

By housing these facilities within Technip Energies’ existing research infrastructure, Reju gains direct access to the company’s decades of experience in catalysis, process development, technology integration and industrial scale-up.

Reju has growing international ambitions and plans additional hubs in Sittard (Netherlands), Lacq (France), and Rochester (US). These will have a production capacity of around 50 000 tonnes a year, treating 300 million articles of clothing.

The European sites are scheduled to become operational in 2028, with the US hub following in 2029. Reju has secured funding of over EUR 140 million for these projects.

‘Together, these facilities form a global, scalable and replicable circular infrastructure designed to turn today’s textile waste into tomorrow’s raw materials,’ Breyta adds.