A NEW APPROACH TO TEXTILE RECYCLING: INNOVATIVE PROCESS ENABLES UPCYCLING OF OLD CLOTHING
Aachen, 22 June 2022 – TechVision Fonds I has joined with High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and a business angel as the first investor in EEDEN GmbH. The start-up from Mönchengladbach has developed an innovative process for the sustainable and environmentally friendly recycling of clothing and other textile products. With the EEDEN financing, the company plans to further expand its research and development activities and establish initial production capacities.
“With its process, EEDEN is addressing the major problem of cotton shortages in the clothing industry,” says Bernhard Kugel, Managing Director of the management company of TechVision Fund I. “As only a fractional part of textiles is currently recycled and processed into new clothing, this results in high resource losses. At the same time, the demand for cotton is increasing rapidly due to the growing world population and trends such as fast fashion. EEDEN’s technology is responding to these developments by enabling sustainable textile recycling that conserves resources.”
Upcycling instead of downcycling
With the EEDEN process, used textiles made from cotton or other cellulose-containing fibres can be converted into pulp, which serves as a resource for new fibres such as viscose or lyocell. This process is known as upcycling: a high-quality product is created from an inferior source material. “Currently, old clothes that cannot be used as second-hand goods often end up abroad, where they are often improperly deposited in nature or burned. Recycling basically only takes place when textiles are ‘down-cycled’ into low-quality products such as cleaning cloths or insulating material. We want to keep the material in a cycle and fulfil the growing demand for high-quality cellulose products,” explain Steffen Gerlach and Reiner Mantsch, the founders of EEDEN.
Compared to other upcycling processes, EEDEN’s technology is more environmentally friendly and at the same time more cost-efficient. It requires significantly less chemicals and reduces by-products such as salt loads in the manufacturing process. As the process also tolerates a higher proportion of foreign fibres compared to the competitors, textiles with a higher mixture of polyester fibres, for example, can also be recycled in the future.
“The transition from a linear value chain to a sustainable circular economy requires in-depth know-how of countless processes and technical details. As a seed investor, we are thrilled to support a team that has developed a comprehensive understanding of the textile industry in previous years and has already built up an impressive network of active and potential partners,” explains Dr Nik Raupp, Investment Manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds.
In addition to the founders and shareholders Steffen Gerlach (CEO & CFO) and Reiner Mantsch (CEO & CTO), EEDEN’s core team members are Julian Hertrampf (CMO), Tobias Börnhorst (Process Engineering) and Lennart Marx (Chemical Engineering). Together, they have already won several start-up competitions and support programmes with EEDEN.
Promising market growth
The market potential for the start-up is high: at well over 20 million tonnes per year, the clothing and fashion industry, EEDEN’s core market, accounts for around 60 percent of the total demand for cotton and cellulose fibres. “EEDEN operates in a dynamic market that is facing major changes. The demand for recycled fibres is already significantly higher than the corresponding supply. Constantly growing textile production, new legislation and trends towards regional sourcing and sustainability ensure that demand for EEDEN products will continue to increase in the future,” says Björn Lang, Principal of TVF Fund Management.