It’s estimated that 92 million tons of textile waste is created each year by the fashion industry. A toxic system of overproduction and overconsumption is ensuring that this waste will continue to increase with textile waste expected to surge 60% per year by 2030. Circular fashion seeks to extend the life of our clothes as well as through recycling, but recycling is notoriously inefficient. Ambercycle is building true circularity through textile regeneration with its material science technology. The company has developed its own fiber, cycora, by separating polyester from cottons and other fibers at a molecular level, purifying the separated polyester material, and treating it. Polyester itself is very carbon-intensive to develop initially and cycora can be regenerated over and over, leading to true circularity. In traditional recycling, only a small portion of material can be recycled and these recycled materials are typically used in things like furniture stuffing or insulation with limited use beyond. Ambercycle has worked with brands like GANNI, ZARA, Saucony, TOMBOGO, and Kozaburo to ensure their products don’t end up in landfills.
LA TechWatch caught up with Ambercycle CEO and Cofounder Shay Sethi to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Our investors include H&M, KIRKBI, Temasek, Far Eastern Group, Zalando, Heartland A/S, and others.
Tell us about your product or service.
Ambercycle is a material science company based in Los Angeles. We are decarbonizing apparel by developing & scaling breakthrough chemistry to separate fibers from one another. Once separated at the molecular level, we can purify and recover the raw materials which can then reconstitute new yarns. Our first product cycora® is made from regenerated, end-of-life textiles, and is of the highest, like-new material quality.
Brands, designers, and retailers can incorporate cycora® into their products today, to start decarbonizing.
This technology is the holy grail to the foundation on which a circular ecosystem can be built.
What inspired the start of Ambercycle?
My cofounder Moby and I started Ambercycle while we were still in college, studying chemistry and engineering at UC Davis. During our research, we discovered that a staggering 54% of all clothing consisted of polyester. We also learned that more than $120B worth of clothing was ending up in landfills each year. To us, this was a fundamentally illogical cycle of waste. After all, so much effort and creativity goes into producing clothing, only for it to be discarded and cause further damage to the environment.
How is it different?
Textile-to-textile regeneration offers true circularity versus a lot of the existing recycling solutions in the market today. Mechanical recycling via bottles are a good start, but they don’t fully address the textile to textile problem, as bottles melted into fibers, without textile-to-textile systems, again end up in landfills. So it’s a slightly longer linear lifecycle, but linear nonetheless.
Creating new textile fibers from old clothing is challenging due to the mixture of fiber types, colors and dyes, additive materials, and dirt that is present. But the upside is so great, because it allows for continuous life cycles of the material being regenerated again and again. Ambercycle technology addresses this using breakthrough materials technology to break down the polyester component under mild conditions, separate the polyester from the cotton and other fibers, and then purify the polyester material from other colorants and additives, to create cycora® fiber. Our technology has been demonstrated at scale and we believe these elements put us in a position to accelerate the transition to circularity in fashion.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
The fashion industry is the world’s second-largest polluting industry, accounting for nearly 10% of the world’s GHG emissions. The majority of these emissions come from the production of materials, with virgin polyester production being a significant contributor.
Our regenerated solution cycora® is predicted to offset close to half the emissions associated with virgin polyester production, at commercial scale. When you factor in the CO2 avoided from incineration in landfills, the environmental benefits far outweigh traditional petroleum-based textiles. We strongly believe that replacing traditional polyester with circular polyester is one of the most impactful actions the fashion industry can take toward decarbonization.
What’s your business model?
Ambercycle sells cycora®, a regenerated polyester made from end-of-life textiles, to manufacturers and brands. A virgin polyester replacement, it is made using the company’s molecular regeneration process, and has been designed to be easily integrated into the preexisting supply chains.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We are seeing increased demand for decarbonized products, as sustainability is a megatrend that is not slowing down.
What was the funding process like?
We are fortunate to be able to attract investors that value the long-term. This is an important problem for humanity to solve.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Most financing efforts fall short when the underlying business is not thoughtfully developed. We spend a lot of time building the business, and believe that capital follows.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Timing of market; sustainability is a megatrend that needs immediate attention
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’ve come a long way from when we first started to play with the idea of circular materials. Our first significant milestone was in 2019, when we transformed garments discarded at the Rotterdam marathon into a brand new bike-jersey. It was the first time the concept of circularity took a real-world form for us. The second major milestone was the development of a demo production system that could process ~15,000 t-shirts worth of textile ‘waste’ daily.
Using the demo production facility, we are able to produce much larger quantities of our regenerated polyester cycora®. We launched with many brands, small and big, ranging from GANNI, ZARA, Saucony, TOMBOGO, and Kozaburo. They range from athletic, to luxury, to ready-to-wear. We hope to continue launching amazing products in the market with talented brands and designers to tell meaningful stories around circularity in fashion.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Focus on developing the business, building demand, and establishing/accomplishing milestones to further de-risk the end goal.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We are at an inflection point to achieve scale and enable ubiquitous change in the material make up of the global closet. We aim to divert 10 million pounds of textile waste away from landfills by 2025, begin commercial scale production of our regenerated solution and enable the fashion industry to achieve its goal of lowering its emissions by 50% by 2030. Producing demonstration levels of material and developing process improvements has de-risked the scale-up and helped facilitate the project of designing and building our first ever commercial plant, which we plan to announce soon.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Beach day !!! 🌊☀️🌴
