Carbios expands portfolio of licences to include recycled textiles market

Biotechnology company Carbios has announced it is expanding its licensing offering to the textile sector via its fibre-to-fibre recycling technology. This follows the successful production of 100 batches at its industrial demonstration plant in Clermont-Ferrand, validating its enzymatic biorecycling process for complex waste.

Since 2025, the company has been applying its process to textile waste rich in polyester (PET) fibres. Tests conducted in industrial conditions have demonstrated a conversion rate of over 95 per cent within 24 hours for post-consumer textile streams. These results enable the production of monomers of virgin-equivalent quality, comparable to those derived from packaging recycling, in particular to manufacture bottles for the cosmetics sector. With the validation of its fibre-to-fibre recycling process, Carbios has reached a new milestone towards its goals.

Opening up to the fashion industry broadens the technology’s commercial scope by diversifying its target customer base worldwide. The company is already working with a consortium including brands such as On, Patagonia, Puma, PVH Corp and Salomon to accelerate the circularity of their products.

“Reaching the 100-batch milestone confirms the robustness and industrial maturity of our technology,” says Benoît Grenot, who took over as CEO in the spring. “Having demonstrated our ability to process PET packaging waste and to roll out this technology under licence, we are now validating its application to the processing of complex textile waste. This success enables us to expand our licensing offering to the global textile market and to meet the strong demand for circular, industrial-scale recycling solutions.”

The enzymatic biorecycling developed by Carbios aims to tackle global PET consumption in textile applications, estimated at around 67 million tonnes per year. The company is continuing its efforts to bring its first industrial site in Meurthe-et-Moselle to fruition, the commissioning of which has recently been postponed until the first half of 2028. The aim remains to scale up the depolymerisation technology to industrial scale to process the equivalent of 300 million T-shirts or two billion coloured bottles at virgin quality.