Shifting the starting point of scale
As the textile industry moves from pilots to industrial scale, one decision increasingly decides who makes it: where do you build? For independent analyst Shivam Gusain, the honest answer is uncomfortable for Europe – the scale, the supply chain and three decades of industrial know-how already sit in Asia. That, he argues, is where the circular-textile transition will be built.
A chemist and life-cycle assessment (LCA) specialist, Gusain has built his reputation puncturing carbon claims that don't add up. We sat down with him to pressure-test our own assumptions – and he pulled few punches.
You argue the next phase of this industry will be decided less by what's inventedthan by where it's built. Why Asia?
"On cost, the geography is brutal. Most new polyester capacity is being built in Asia, mostly in China – which isn't even running its plants at full tilt and can flood the market with cheap polyester whenever it likes. It did exactly that with aluminum; why wouldn't it again? Europe can't match that on volume, and it can't even sell its monomers[1], because China makes its own and won't pay more for European material. So unless Europe industrializes massively, which I don't see happening, you build where the industrial system already exists – and that's Asia."
"What Syre is doing isnot abandoning Europe, but shifting the starting point of scale to where the system already exists. They are recognising that Europe is, at best, a regulatory context and a consumer market, and that it is not, in its current form, the industrial location in which the hardest problems of scaling chemical textile recycling can be efficiently solved."
- From Gusain's essay on Substack
Asia narrows quickly to Vietnam in your telling. Why Vietnam?
"Energy, mostly. For a chemical recycler, if you can't get clean energy, it's hard to get a low impact score and convince anyone you're truly a better solution. You need a large amount of renewable energy – and Vietnam is just now starting to expand it; they've signed their first PPA, which is a good sign. Europe has plenty of renewable energy, but it's madly expensive – you can have a great impact, butif it's too expensive you can't deliver a product, so what's the point? China went the other way and makes its own raw materials from coal, just to avoid depending on anyone. Vietnam has some of the best life-cycle conditions in the market compared with the other options – that's why I've written about it. You build where clean energy can actually scale."
You also argue the same clean energy does more good somewhere else – in the supply chain. Why?
"It's a mathematical case. Take the same renewable energy and put it to work in the supply chain – electrifying processes, swapping in heat pumps – and the impact savings can befar larger, because those processes are so energy-intensive. So it's not 'don't do this, do that.' It's about doing things in the order that makes the most sense, to get the most bang for your buck. The same energy just does much more good there."
Even with the right focus and the right place, scaling has been painfully slow. What's holding it back?
"It's lack of coordination. The big problem is everybody wants to win by themselves, which is a very stupid idea. Innovators are willing to collaborate with brands, but not with each other. If we co-locate plants and share energy, residual heat and chemicals,a product's footprint can fall dramatically. The pieces exist, but the willingness to build together doesn't."
Which lever would you push to accelerate scale?
"Ambition. Most of what gets called scale isn't. A few hundred or even a few thousand tonnes is not scale. Someone announces the 'world's largest' plant at a hundred tonnes – is that really large? In China a single polymerization line runs past a million; that's the real benchmark. For polyester you have to think in millions of tonnes, with serious volume per plant. And to get there you must partner with the biggest players to reach the volumes that make the economics work – even the high-volume giants the industry would rather not be associated with. People don't like hearing it, but nice brands finish last. Sometimes you have to shake hands with the devil."
You've painted a pretty unsentimental picture. Is the industry betting on too many new materials?
"We don't always need that many innovations – we need a few good ones first. A lot of money has gone into next-gen materials for very little result, and we keep pushing companies to scale before they're ready. We should buy innovators more time and put funding where the technical case is genuinely strong. And the industry has to be more honest: do one thing, do it really well – there's no need to claim you do everything."
[1]Monomers are small molecular building blocks that can be chemically linked together to form polymers such as polyester