Textile recycling community coming together at Textiles Recycling Expo in Brussels

At the expo Valmet showcased its fiber-to-fiber chemical textile recycling solutions. Valmet's textile experts Heli Kangas and Shirin Asaadi summarized the findings from the event.

"There is a clear momentum and interest for textile recycling and now legislation needs to act. We all agree that the direction is clear, but we also need to be honest that further investment into innovation is important, public investment money is needed, and brands need to be committed on this journey." 

"We had a lot of interesting discussions during the event. Some of the visitors were from companies we are cooperating with in this field, some only know us from the pulp and paper industry and quite many didn't know Valmet at all. People showed interest in Valmet processing concept, which was presented at the exhibition wall, many were actually impressed that we can cover such a large scope."

The exhibitors reflected the textile market with most of the booths showcasing polyester recycling solutions.

"Valmet's focus in textile recycling is cellulosic fibers, mainly cotton rich materials. But as most of the cotton materials are polycotton we also need to have also solution for the recovered polyester, including the analysis and measurement solutions. For this we can utilize both our automation solutions expertise as well as the experience we already have in plastics recycling from pyrolysis so we need to build on those," they concluded.