Kipas Textiles, Europe’s largest fully integrated textile manufacturer headquartered in Istanbul, is launching fibR-e – a new recycling platform designed to tackle the hurdles that have stopped polyester from becoming truly circular.

The fashion industry produces millions of tons of polyester-based clothing every year, little of which is currently recycled, and fashion is now facing a reckoning the company says.

Regulations across Europe and other regions will require brands to take responsibility for the full lifecycle of their products and consumers are asking harder questions about sustainability.

FibR-e can provide brands with a credible way forward. At its plant in Adana, Turkey, the company Meltem Kimya now converts post-consumer garments containing 70% or more polyester, including polyester-elastane blends, as well as any other polyester-based mixed-fibre blends. Items with trims still attached and mixed-colour feedstocks are converted into high-quality GRS-certified rTEX Chips. Kipas Textiles is turning these into certified, high-quality filament yarns and staple fibres ready for new collections.

The platform removes accessories during processing rather than through manual sorting, cutting labour and bottlenecks. It decolourises blended fabrics to produce cleaner outputs. At its core is a patented molecular recycling technology developed by Meltem Kimya that breaks polyester down to its building blocks and rebuilds it without creating microplastics, allowing repeated recycling without loss of quality.

Early analysis shows that producing polyester entirely from textile waste through fibR-e cuts emissions by nearly 74% compared with virgin production.

“Recycling has barely scratched the surface of the polyester problem,” says Kipas CEO Halit Gümüser. “With fibR-e, we can take real post-consumer waste in all its complexity and return it to the market as certified, high-quality filament yarns and staple fibres. This is how the industry moves from linear to circular, not through pilots but through commercial scale.”

FibR-e is built on a multi-year partnership between Kipas and specialist companies, with Meltem Kimya providing the molecular recycling expertise that underpins the platform.

As a global yarn and fabric producer, Kipas will channel fibR-e materials directly into its own supply chain, enabling bulk production at competitive pricing. The outputs are traceable, performance-tested and designed to meet commercial quality standards while helping brands reduce virgin material use and prepare for stricter regulations.

www.kipastextiles.com