Turkish textile company Kipas Textiles is pushing its recycling platform, called fibR-e, toward commercial scale. The facility went into operation at the end of 2025 and is currently designed to process up to 100 tons of textile waste per day, which at full capacity amounts to roughly 36,500 tons per year.

This production line targets what the recycling industry widely recognizes as a difficult problem—textile waste with complex composition. According to Kipas, its process can handle waste with a high polyester content, including polyester-elastane blends, multi-color mixed waste, and finished garments that still carry trims and accessories.

In terms of technology, fibR-e uses molecular recycling, depolymerizing polyester waste into its basic building blocks and then repolymerizing them into recycled polyester; the resulting material can be further processed into staple fiber and filament yarn for use in new textile production. Kipas says that compared with virgin polyester production, this textile-to-textile process can reduce emissions by nearly 74%.

The industry context for this capacity build-out is that textiles made from recycled textile waste currently account for less than 1% of the global fiber market (data from Textile Exchange). At the same time, the EU is tightening rules related to textile waste, including separate collection and producer responsibility requirements, with related pressure expected to intensify further from 2028.

For the used clothing and textile recycling industry, the point here is not whether the technology can work, but whether processing capacity can reach scale. A facility handling 100 tons per day shows that recycling infrastructure is moving in that direction.

Source: Kipas pushes textile recycling toward commercial scale with fibR-e · Originally published 2026-09-14