Activewear firm Lululemon has invested within the $30 million Sequence A spherical raised by Syntetica, a French startup that developed a novel method to recycling nylon, whose properties make it each too good to surrender however exhausting to reuse.
Syntetica guarantees to recycle two sorts of nylon — Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6 — that may’t simply be sorted out from one another within the textile waste collected from customers, its CEO Marco Bertone instructed TechCrunch.
With tons of clothes ending up in landfills annually, one key motive for the style business to put money into extra circularity is buyer notion, particularly for premium attire manufacturers. Startups like Syntetica additionally profit from regulatory tailwinds, and from current worth volatility that unusually affected nylon.
Within the final six months, geopolitical turmoil in the oil industry has led to quarterly or weekly nylon worth renegotiations, Bertone mentioned. “It’s been a wake-up name to many manufacturers which have been counting on petrol-sourced nylon and petrol-sourced synthetics for pricing and comfort, and which at this time have seen huge shocks to their system.”
In response to Bertone, this can be a good match for Syntetica’s pragmatic method. “We have now constructed the corporate with the readability that there’s no inexperienced premium. That if you wish to scale actual options for a sustainable world, it must be price aggressive, extremely scalable, and you’ll want to construct partnerships from the very begin.”
The startup’s companions embrace manufacturers like Lululemon, but in addition Victoria’s Secret and Etam, with a recycling challenge that would go to market early subsequent yr. Syntetica’s Sequence A was additionally backed by a big attire producer, MAS Holdings — “a recognition of how vital the issue has develop into,” Bertone mentioned.
It’s certainly fairly uncommon for a provide chain actor to put money into a participant that hasn’t scaled but. However earlier than its Sequence A, Syntetica had already closed a partnership with Michelin’s Centre for Sustainable Supplies to ascertain a business demonstration facility within the industrial firm’s French hometown, Clermont-Ferrand.
Not like different startups in its discipline, Syntetica received’t produce textile itself, not to mention a novel materials. The product of its recycling course of shall be pellets, which may then be utilized by others to make yarn for the likes of MAS. “It’s a narrative of pragmatic industrial partnerships with the best gamers to get buy-in from the entire worth chain,” Bertone mentioned.
With a background in vogue and second-hand e-commerce, Bertone is the enterprise man at Syntetica. However via Entrepreneur First’s matchmaking-style accelerator hosted at Paris campus Station F, he teamed up with chemistry researcher Louis Monsigny. The duo then cemented their collaboration in Reims, the place they made use of AgroParisTech’s lab.
Since then, they’ve additionally employed a CTO, Ash Ward, who beforehand labored for failed battery company Northvolt, whose cofounder Peter Carlsson can also be one among Syntetica’s advisors. For Bertone, their scars and first-hand expertise with the ups and downs of scaling give them expertise on when and the place to take dangers.
“As a startup, we’ve to be comfy taking extra dangers than industrials; in any other case, there could be no innovation. However there’s additionally a line— once you parallelize too many dangers, then it might develop into complicated,” he mentioned. That’s additionally why Syntetica isn’t diversifying simply but.
Though it may ultimately recycle different supplies or serve different industries, its focus is on utilizing its funding to display its skill to provide a whole lot of tons of pellets per yr and ship them to purchasers within the clothes provide chain. After that, Bertone mentioned, “Syntetica shall be constructing services world wide, near waste sources and near textile manufacturing.”
Whereas it has international ambitions, the startup advantages from being based mostly in France. Its Sequence A was led by the Ecotechnologies 2 fund managed by the Inexperienced Enterprise crew at Bpifrance, France’s public funding financial institution as a part of the France 2030 plan. It has additionally obtained assist from the European Innovation Council (EIC) with fairness, grants and by way of its acceleration program.
For these public backers, startups like Syntetica are a part of a broader plan to strengthen Europe’s industrial capabilities whereas decreasing reliance on fossil fuels. However the startup additionally hopes to generate returns, and can also be backed by non-public buyers together with EQT Ventures, SWEN Capital Companions and household places of work.
Syntetica has opponents, too — some utilizing an enzymatic method to “eat” plastics, but in addition chemical big BASF, which developed recycled nylon. Nonetheless, after attending business occasions, Bertone hopes they are going to all develop. “If everybody have been to scale to tens of factories, we nonetheless wouldn’t remedy this drawback,” he mentioned. “Everybody must succeed for us to succeed as a society.”
Lululemon has additionally invested in different textiles recycling startups comparable to Epoch Biodesign and Samsara Eco.
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