TreeToTextile – the recycling company formed by H&M, Inter IKEA, Stora Enso and LSCS Invest – is to build a €35 million demonstration plant for upscaling its process for the production of new regenerated cellulosic fibres for textiles and nonwovens.

The aim is to demonstrate that the company’s technology can be industrially scaled up and the fibres produced at low manufacturing cost.

The TreeToTextile technology is a chemical process using renewable forest raw material and regenerating the cellulose into a textile fibre by spinning dissolving pulp. It uses less chemicals than conventional production, allowing for a more sustainable and cost-efficient process. There are no sulphur emissions during the production and the water and chemicals used are recycled and reused.

The strong sustainability performance of the technology has been confirmed by a third party verified Life-Cycle-Assessment study. The process is deliberately designed to have low energy demand and low chemical need and is engineered to suit large scale production, including a recovery system for reusing the chemicals.

“Our technology has the potential to reduce the environmental footprint of the textile industry significantly,” said TreeToTextile CEO Sigrid Barnekow. “With the support, innovative agendas, know-how and size of our owners, we can make an important contribution to enabling the textile industry to become more sustainable and circular.”

The owners are contributing €27.4 million of the cost for building the new plant, with €7.6 million coming from the Swedish Energy Agency. The plant will be established at Stora Enso’s Nymölla mill in southern Sweden, and construction will start in spring 2021. The production capacity will be 1,500 tons of fibre per year.