Companies

Inditex signs a three-year agreement to buy recycled polyester for 70 million euros

Nov 2, 2023 Spain

The owner of Zara, among others, will be collaborating with the material sciences company Ambercycle to help scale a textile made from post-industrial and post-consumer polyester waste

Inditex has signed a three-year agreement to purchase a significant portion of the annual production of cycora for more than 70 million euros. Developed by the Los Angeles-based materials science company, cycora stands out for being made from post-industrial and post-consumer polyester waste using molecular regeneration technology.

This “commitment will be key to support the construction of Ambercycle’s first commercial-scale textile regeneration factory”, helping to make circular materials more widely available in the fashion supply chain. Production of cycora in the new plant is expected to begin around 2025 and continue to be incorporated into Inditex’s products in the following three years.

“At Inditex, we are committed to achieving circularity in the fashion industry. We want to drive innovation to scale up new solutions, processes and materials to achieve textile-to-textile recycling. Ambercycle’s groundbreaking molecular regeneration technology transforms end-of-life textiles into new materials, effectively reducing waste and emissions in the production cycle”, commented Javier Losada, Inditex’s Chief Sustainability Officer.

This initiative is in line with the group's aim of having 100% of its textile products made exclusively from materials with a smaller environmental footprint by 2030, and 25% of the textile fibres made from next-generation materials that do not yet exist at an industrial scale, such as this one.

"Ambercycle’s goal is to enable circularity by replacing virgin polyester with textile-to-textile regenerated cycora. Our partnership with Inditex represents a monumental leap towards realizing circularity at scale in the fashion industry", commented Shay Sethi, CEO of Ambercycle.

Image Credits: inditex.com

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