Puma and Re&Up to collaborate on scaling circularity

Sports company Puma has announced a multi-year partnership with circulartech company Re&Up Recycling Technologies to scale a fully circular textile solution, where it transforms textile waste into RE&UP’s next-gen recycled cotton fibres and recycled polyester chips.

In a statement, Puma said the move was aligned with its Vision 2030 sustainability goals, where circularity is one of its focus areas. The sports company has already scaled up its Re:Fibre textile-to-textile recycling programme, producing millions of football jerseys made out of an increasing share of recycled textiles.

In addition, Re&Up recently became a key next-gen raw material partner in the Re:Fibre programme, supporting Puma’s ambition to reduce reliance on bottle-recycled polyester as it looks to enhance true circularity while minimising textile waste. Due to its success, Puma added that this collaboration has now evolved into a broader global commitment to fully enabling circularity.

As part of the expansion, Puma will introduce Re:Fibre to the Americas, leveraging Re&Up recycled raw materials within its local supply chain. This plays into Puma’s aim to use 30 percent fibre-to-fibre recycled polyester fabric for its apparel products by 2030.

Howard Williams, director of global innovation apparel and accessories at Puma, said: “As part of our Vision 2030 goals, we want to have 30 percent of our polyester fabric in apparel fibre-to-fibre recycled by 2030 and our collaboration with Re&Up opens exciting possibilities for integrating virgin-equivalent recycled materials into our products.

“These materials offer the performance we need while helping us achieve our circularity goals.”

Özgür Atsan, chief commercial officer at Re&Up, added: “Puma, as one of the most forward-thinking brands in the industry, shares our vision for closing the recycled material gap. The proven quality of our products, our ability to process diverse textile compositions, our annual capacity of 80,000 tons, and our commitment to renewable energy reinforces our mission to produce next-gen materials and establish circularity as the standard for the textile industry.

“We proudly define our products as next-gen materials, as they are designed to meet the needs of the next generation in the textile industry.”

Re&Up’s recycling technology processes diverse textile feedstocks, including post-consumer and post-industrial waste, as well as complex blended textiles like polycotton and polyester-elastane, materials traditionally difficult to recycle.