The partners building the path to scale
Industrialization is not a solo effort. It happens when companies with complementary capabilities decide to build together. For Syre, two of those key partners are ABB and JEPLAN. We sat down with both to understand why they chose to enter this partnership – and how they see the road ahead.
ABB: Building the industrial backbone for circular fiber
Lweendo Ahnlund is Global Sales Manager for Pulp, Paper & Fiber at ABB's Process Industries division. Drawing on decades of ABB's experience scaling some of the world's most complex process industries, Lweendo's work focuses on supporting customers as they move from pilot operations to large, integrated plants.
ABB recently expanded its global business line to include fiber, alongside its long-standing presence in pulp and paper. How does the partnership with Syre fit into ABB's strategic direction?
"Adding 'Fiber' to our global Pulp, Paper and Fiber business line reflects both our current operations and a broader future focus on fiber-based industries. It is about helping us meet customers where they are and positively influence where they are going next. We see that this will include resource efficiency, higher levels of autonomy in operations, circularity and new value chains. The agreement with Syre moves in that direction. Polyester is already one of the world’s most widely used fibers, yet almost none of it is recycled today. Scaling textile‑to‑textile recycling is therefore not a niche challenge, but rather a major industrial opportunity with societal impacts."
ABB has helped scale some of the world's most complex process industries. How does that experience translate to collaborating with Syre to scale circular polyester production?
"Many of the challenges Syre is addressing are familiar to us from pulp, paper, fiber and other process industries, including mining, cement and metals. Scaling production is not only about increasing volume but also process stability, quality consistency, safety and process control.
ABB has spent many decades supporting customers as they move from pilot operations to large, integrated plants. Textile‑to‑textile recycling introduces new variables, particularly in feedstock and process behavior, but the underlying requirements remain the same. Our collaboration with Syre is exploratory in nature, but it is grounded in our industrial scale‑up experience. We are assessing where our technologies can help support a stable, high‑quality and scalable operation as Syre advances its plans."
The plant in Gia Lai province is being built in a region without an existing fiber recycling industry. What does it take to build industrial infrastructure in a greenfield context like that?
"Building a first‑of‑its‑kind plant in a greenfield location requires more than equipment. It requires an integrated view of power, automation, digital control, safety and operational readiness. It also requires close partnerships for both supply and demand, as well as trusted long-term technology providers.
ABB has long experience of supporting customers in regions where industrial ecosystems are still emerging. In the case of Syre’s planned site in Vietnam, our role is to assess how ABB technologies couldsupport industrial‑scale operations as the project develops. That system‑level perspective is particularly important when there is no existing fiber recycling infrastructure to build upon. It helps reduce risk and lay a solid foundation for long‑term performance."
Partnerships like this one – between a next-gen materials company and an industrial automation giant – might have seemed unlikely a few years ago. What does it say about cross-industry collaboration?
"Scaling circular technologies cannot be done inisolation. New materials and processes need to be paired with industrial execution capability if they are to make a meaningful impact.
The collaboration between ABB and Syre will be complementary. Syre brings an innovative approach to textile‑to‑textile recycling, while ABB brings experience in building and supporting complex industrial systems. This kind of partnership will become a proving ground inhelping move circular technologies from ambition to operation, creating the basis for the sustainable industries of the future. Models like these allow us to work in close collaboration in exploratory ways, and will become increasingly important as new circular value chains continue to emerge."
JEPLAN: A decade of operational experience meets aglobal recycling vision
Masaki Takao is the Representative Director, President, and CEO of JEPLAN, INC. – a Japanese pioneer that has spent over a decade developing and operating chemical recycling technologies for circularity in packaging and textiles.
What made Syre the right partner to take JEPLAN’s operationa experience in chemical recycling into textile-to-textile recycling?
“Syre and JEPLAN’s strengths are truly complementary. JEPLAN brings over a decade of hands-on experience in chemical recycling in real industrial environments, along with a proven track record of operating processes stability and delivering products that consistently meet customer quality requirements. Syre brings a different but equally critical capability: a strong global perspective on textile innovation, technology integration, and how to connect recycling solutions with brands and markets atscale. Together, we create a very practical pathway to make textile-to-textile recycling commercially viable.”
What are the most important lessons from JEPLAN's experience that can now be applied to textile-to-textile recycling at commercial scale?
“One of the most important lessons from JEPLAN’s experience is that scaling chemical recycling is not only about chemistry – it is fundamentally about operations. That includes everything from procurement, production planning and control, maintenance, and sales, to how a site interacts with its surrounding environment, including regulations, logistics, and local constraints. Large-scale operations must also be resilient to variability and disruption, such as seasonal fluctuations, feedstock supply issues, or unexpected operational disturbances.
Scale brings clear benefits. But any failure at scale can have a substantial impact on the business. For this reason, it is critical to anticipate these risks and design systems for commercial operation from the very beginning. By applying an industrial mindset from the outset, we aim to build systems that are not only technically sound, but also robust, resilient, and commercially viable. This is how JEPLAN is approaching scale-up together with Syre.”
What is fundamentally different about textile-to-textile recycling compared to what you've done before – and what has that meant for how you approach this partnership?
“Until now, JEPLAN has accumulated commercial experience in the chemical recycling of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), particularly in bottle-to-bottle recycling. And we can see that there are a few differences between textile-to-textile recycling and PET bottle recycling.
First, textile products contain a wide variety of materials and functional treatments, which makes recycling significantly more complex than bottle recycling.
Second, PET bottles benefit from relatively well-established collection and sorting systems. In contrast, post-consumer textiles are not widely collected in a separated or recycling-ready manner.
Third, for brands and manufacturers using recycled materials, textile supply chains are long and complex, making verification and traceability much more difficult. As a result, textile-to-textile recycling requires close alignment across material design, brand requirements, and the entire supply chain.
Together with Syre, we are building solutions with the entire ecosystem in mind, not just scaling a process in isolation.”
What does success look like for what you're building together?
“Success means textile-to-textile recycling operating at a real commercial scale – reliably and economically. Recycled polyester from post-consumer textiles should be a genuine alternative to virgin materials, not a niche option. If we achieve that, it will help close the loop for polyester textiles and accelerate the broader transition toward a circular textile economy.”