In conversation with Tim King: Syre’s road ahead
Syre has spent its first years building a strong foundation with the industry’s largest commercial agreements, leading industrial partnerships, and a committed investor base. As the company enters its next phase, the focus increasingly shifts toward industrial advancement and adapting to a rapidly changing market environment. Having led Syre's industrial development and strategy execution since joining the company, Tim King is nowstepping into the role of CEO.
We spoke with Tim about Syre's journey so far, therealities of building a new industrial system, and how Syre is navigating ahead.
Tell us a bit about your background.
I was born in Australia, and have spent the last 20 years as a Swede too after meeting my Swedish wife. My younger years were characterized by being pretty good at most things, without being outstanding at anything.
My career really started off in consulting at McKinsey where I specialized in operations, and since then it’s mostly been about executing in line roles - leading teams across strategy, operations, manufacturing, and large-scale transformation projects. In this time I’ve worked in multiple industries and on most continents on the globe.
I was fortunate to join Syre in its early days and for the last two years have been serving as COO where I’ve led our work in Engineering, Feedstock, and the plant project. It’s been enormously challenging but also very stimulating to start such a big, ambitious project from an almost blank sheet of paper.
Why did you accept the job?
Accepting my initial role at Syre was easy - I’ve shifted in my career and have come to understand that I’m most content when I believe that the overarching mission of the company actually matters. Execution is mostly about staying power, and if you can’t push through the challenging days or that obstacle that feels impossible when you first hear about it, it’s hard to get far. So Syre’s mission was totally in line with what I was looking for.
As for the CEO role - good question. CEO roles are tough and in a start-up there is an incessant flow of problems to solve. Ultimately, however, I made the decision again because of Syre’s mission, the privileged position I have in working with a world-class team, and perhaps the slightly masochistic part of me that likes that never-been-done-before challenge.
How would you describe Syre's journey so far?
Impressive, brilliant, evolving, stimulating… and frustrating. There are tons of adjectives I could use depending on which day you ask me. We’ve done some things outstandingly well, such as our customer relationships and the significant off-take agreements, building a global team, attracting leading investors and partners, etc.
We have also had our challenges, which have made us rethink, reboot, and kill some darlings. Looking ahead there are a few concerns with a weakened capital market for climate projects and a slowdown in regulation supporting circular textiles in Europe, which is such an important driver of how textiles will be purchased.
We’ve thus built a very strong foundation, but there is more to do ahead than what we have already achieved, so in some ways we’re only just beginning. That being said, our mission remains as relevant as ever. Polyester demand continues to grow, and thus the need for circular solutions.
As Syre advances, what will be most important for you as CEO to focus on?
Our focus is on translating the foundation we've built into industrial reality. We have some important and exciting strategic choices to make over the next months on how we best execute the first stage of our plan, so putting Syre on a good footing here will be critical. Then it’s going to all be about executing and making things happen in a way that optimizes speed, economics, and scalability.
What is the status of the production plant in Vietnam?
Vietnam is very important for us and for our customers given it’s a global hub for textiles and a good source of textile waste. We’ve built significant knowledge, relationships and an ecosystem over the past year on site there. Our ambitionis the 150k MT greenfield facility; however, we are looking into a wide range of models for the first industrial step. In recent months the government has discussed with us to consider alternate sizings given that this is a first-of-a-kind technology and business in an industry as sensitive as waste. We know that the demand for the product is strong, but we also know capital markets are increasingly challenging. Our job is to proactively adapt to current market conditions and ensure what we build is both commercially robust and scalable. This is what we are currently working on, and we will come back and talk more about this as this develops.
Looking ahead, what gives you the most confidence?
Circula rtextiles are the future and our mission is arguably more relevant than ever. The challenge that we have taken on is to transform ambitious ideas into reality. Impact and profound change have never been easy but we feel we’re close to making things happen, which is an exciting and inspirational time to be at Syre.