A Textile-to-Fibre Accelerator plant – which the company has started up in Winterthur, Switzerland – showcases Worn Again’s proprietary chemical recycling technology at scale, providing a real-world validation of a process that recovers and regenerates polyester and cellulose from end-of-life textiles. This marks a significant milestone in Worn Again’s journey to transform textile waste into circular fibres.

Less than 1% of clothes are recycled. Meanwhile, textile production already exceeds a staggering 120 million tonnes per annum, a figure that continues to grow, exacerbated by consumer demand for fast fashion. The time is now to scale solutions designed to tackle the textile waste crisis.

“The fashion industry is at a pivotal point,” said Michael Weiss, CEO of Worn Again Technologies. “Blended polycottons, once nearly impossible to recycle efficiently, are now being reimagined through our groundbreaking process. This technology maintains material value, minimises waste, and unlocks significant economic opportunities.”

From laboratory to scaled application

The Accelerator represents the evolution from laboratory innovation to industrial demonstration. In recent years, Worn Again has refined the process chemistry and engineering design – optimising solvent systems and separation techniques – to enable efficient, high-purity recovery of polyester and cellulose fibres. Crucially, the process recovers over 95% of solvents used, reinforcing environmental responsibility.

The technology’s multi-solvent approach allows effective separation of complex materials, including dyes and elastane, which are major challenges for traditional recycling methods. Since 2024, the company achieved breakthroughs by successfully spinning fibres from recovered outputs, reaching new heights in product purity and quality – critical milestones underpinning the deployment of larger-scale operations.

Ongoing scale-up engineering activities continue to enable process efficiencies that weren’t feasible in the laboratory – enhancing the value proposition of the recycling technology as it scales.

The Accelerator plant is being delivered in modules. The first module is to recover spinnable polyester from waste textiles, including post-consumer polycotton blends sourced from Switzerland, the EU & UK. The recovered, Circular Polyester, will soon be available for downstream piloting & product application testing. The next module (which has entered detailed engineering) will produce Next-Gen Cellulosic Fibres and other advanced cellulosic materials.

Advancing towards commercial deployment

The Accelerator provides a platform for testing the technology’s real-world applications. Partner companies will be able to evaluate their feedstocks and validate the process across diverse textile streams, generating critical data to refine and scale operations.

Worn Again is progressing towards a full-scale manufacturing facility designed to process significant volumes of textile waste and produce high-value circular products. “The Accelerator is a critical asset for building towards our first commercial plant.” said Toby Moss, Chief Commercial Officer, “Testing at this scale will expand our solutions to a broader range of feedstocks, ensuring that we stay ahead by valorising more material streams and creating a growing portfolio of high-value, downstream product applications.”

Worn Again has gathered a growing network of strategic partners who will now receive priority access the Accelerator plant and its circular products. As production capacities continue to grow, it will further develop these partnerships and new ones to deliver binding commitments for supply and offtakes of a planned first commercial scale production plant. With the Accelerator now operational, Worn Again is open for business and ready to work with brands, manufacturers and waste handlers to “clean up fashion”.