The way Syre CEO Dennis Nobelius sees it, if there’s any sliver of a silver lining in Iran’s Strait of Hormuz blockade, it’s that surging crude oil and natural gas prices have also driven the cost of virgin polyester to unprecedented highs.
With major suppliers hiking fiber prices by 25 percent or more over the past month, the margin between textile‑to‑textile recycled polyester and its conventional counterpart—once a yawning chasm—no longer seems so insurmountable after all. And while the chokepoint will eventually clear and business as usual resume, fashion brands feeling the squeeze from petrochemical-derived inputs are taking notice in a way they hadn’t before.
“Brands don’t like volatility,” Nobelius said. “That’s a benefit to us because our feedstock isn’t related to oil being dug from the ground, so we can disconnect a bit from that. Moving forward, that’s something we see as a valuable contribution in our discussions with them.”
While Nobelius declined to say how much of an edge regular polyester typically has over Syre’s circular polyester, or cPET, cost-wise—it depends on factors like uptake agreements, feedstock contributions and scale, he said—recent developments have also bolstered the business case for apparel makers beyond the usual sustainability marketing.
Not that the Swedish startup has struggled to attract interest. Backed by TPG Rise Climate, Volvo Car AB, Giant Ventures, Norrsken VC and the IMAS Foundation, the innovator has already secured enough high-profile strategic partners—including H&M Group, Nike, Gap Inc. and Target—to unlock new financing for its first commercial-scale plant, most likely in Vietnam’s Gia Lai province, where it aims to crank out 150,000 metric tons of cPET a year.
But first, Nobelius said, Syre needs to resolve how to ship textile waste into the Southeast Asian nation, which restricts imports of used clothing yet cannot muster the quantities the factory will need alone. So far, discussions with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính and his government appear headed for a breakthrough, he said. If momentum holds, construction could begin next year, with full operations firing on all cylinders by 2028.
More pieces began falling into place this week. On Tuesday, Syre announced a memorandum of understanding with ABB, the Swedish-Swiss tech giant that specializes in electrification and automation—both critical to running the plant. Under the MOU, the two companies will figure out how to adapt ABB technologies such as distributed control systems, digital industrial software and “source to socket” electricity distribution to Syre’s specific needs while boosting resource efficiency. In one promising sign, ABB’s pulp and paper division has been renamed the pulp, paper and fiber division.
“That’s a great testament to the work we’re doing together,” Nobelius said. “To automate such a big plant, it needs to function perfectly—quality and precision need to be there at all times. And I think they could actually reduce our energy consumption, improve our yield and secure continuous flow without interruptions.”
Thursday saw another partnership reveal: this time with JEPLAN Group, a midsized environmental service firm whose name derives from Japan Environment Planning.
“They’re coming more from an operations perspective,” Nobelius said. “What does it take to run such a plant? What fine-tuning optimization do you need to be able to operate at scale? That’s the kind of expertise they’re bringing. And one area I’m personally intrigued by is how to secure byproducts from our plant so they end up in new products, closing that loop.”
Also useful is JEPLAN’s Kitakyushu-based PET chemical recycling plant, which includes demonstration and semi-industrial units for testing and scaling chemical recycling technologies.
The feeling is mutual: “Syre’s ambition, business backbone and global reach in technology integration—combined with our extensive chemical recycling experience—create a powerful platform for accelerating breakthrough solutions for the textile industry,” Masaki Takao, CEO of JEPLAN, said in a statement.
Nobelius is candid about why the company is leaning on outside help. “We’re not the best at everything,” he admitted. “And we recognize the different types of expertise out there in the world.” Going solo instead of tapping what already exists would stall plans by at least 10 years, he added.
“We see ourselves as technology agnostic because we’re not the tech founders,” Nobelius said. “We’re not tied to certain technology and a certain application that needs to be a certain way. If we find something better that gives us speed or scale, we’ll go with that.”
Right now, Syre believes its glycolysis-based approach, which converts polyester waste into high-quality BHET monomers for repolymerizing into new yarn, has the highest odds of success at scale, volume and—yes—cost competitiveness. But it isn’t easy being a pioneer; creating feedstock flows that don’t currently exist remains a challenge. So is formalizing what has traditionally been a fragmented informal sector, ensuring decent jobs in the process.
Even so, Vietnam is only the launchpad for bigger ambitions—Indonesia, Portugal or India could be next. By 2032, Nobelius said, Syre hopes to have 10-12 gigascale production plants running at full tilt, collectively churning out 3 million metric tons of cPET a year.
“Right now, we’re focused on Vietnam to get that up and running,” Nobelius said. “But we’re also eyeing where the next opportunity could be—scaled plants or smaller plants we could launch on a brownfield, perhaps. That is something we’re scouting all the time.”
War or no war.
