Paris-based textile recycling startup Syntetica has raised a $30 million Series A to build its first commercial demonstration facility and scale a chemical process designed to recover the two dominant forms of nylon from mixed textile waste.
The round was led by Bpifrance’s Ecotechnologies 2 fund, with participation from SWEN Capital Partners, lululemon, apparel manufacturer MAS Holdings and existing investor EQT Ventures.
Family offices associated with Peugeot, Etam and the largest shareholder in Indorama Ventures also invested, alongside support from Bpifrance and the European Innovation Council.
Founded by Marco Bertone and Louis Monsigny, Syntetica says its patented process can recover two of the most common forms of Nylon (Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6) in the same recycling stream, removing the need to identify and separate the two materials before treatment. Normally, this can only be done in a separate process, and rarely with clothing.
That is a significant technical problem because discarded clothing hardly ever consists of a single clean polymer. Nylon is commonly blended with cotton, polyester and elastane, as well as dyes, coatings, zips, buttons and metals, making it an insanely complex thing to recycle.
Industry is “really good at recycling plastic bottles because they are mono-material, mono-colour,” Bertone told Pathfounders over a call. “Textiles are just very complex.”
Applying conventional high-temperature recycling processes to those mixtures, he said, can produce “a big goo which is inseparable”.
To tackle this thorny problem, Syntetica instead uses proprietary chemicals and catalysts to selectively break down the nylon while leaving other components behind.
“We’ve developed a green chemistry process which is able to, like a sniper, attack nylon and leave everything else behind,” Bertone said.
The nylon is depolymerised into its molecular building blocks, known as monomers, which are then purified using additional processes developed by Syntetica. The company claims the resulting material matches the quality of virgin nylon produced from fossil fuels while carrying a substantially lower carbon footprint.
“We drop ourselves back into the usual textile supply chain, but it’s made from 100% complex textile waste,” Bertone said.
Global nylon production reached around 7 million tonnes in 2024, according to Textile Exchange, but recycled nylon represents only about 2% of the market. More than 80% of textiles discarded by households are currently incinerated, landfilled or abandoned in the environment, the company said.
Syntetica’s process is designed to handle both post-industrial scraps and post-consumer clothing. Production waste represents roughly 20% of textile waste, while discarded consumer textiles make up most of the remainder.
The funding will finance a demonstration plant at Michelin’s Centre for Sustainable Materials in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Syntetica will use Michelin’s industrial engineering expertise to move from laboratory-scale development to production of hundreds of tonnes of recycled material annually.
Bertone said the plant would process “millions of garments” into virgin-quality nylon from the end of 2027 and deliver the company’s first industrial volumes.
Rather than sell the output as a commodity, Syntetica plans to contract directly with clothing and automotive companies seeking access to limited supplies of recycled nylon.
The company is already working with Victoria’s Secret and Etam, while investor lululemon is also a prospective customer, given its investment. Bertone said another seven or eight large fashion and automotive groups were in discussions to secure future volumes.
MAS Holdings’ investment brings in one of the world’s largest apparel manufacturers, whose customers include lululemon, Victoria’s Secret and Nike. Syntetica expects MAS to contribute manufacturing and supply-chain expertise as the technology scales.
Bertone told Pathfounders the company also uses data models and AI to classify waste, optimise its chemical process and test new treatment combinations, although its core technology remains industrial chemistry.
Syntetica does have some potential competitors, although none publicly describes precisely the same, more efficient, single-process which Syntetica has come up with.
Australia’s Samsara Eco uses engineered enzymes to break down Nylon 6, Nylon 6,6, polyester and mixed fibres, and has already worked with lululemon on recycled Nylon 6,6. London-based Epoch Biodesign separately markets enzymatic processes for both Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6 and says each can recover nylon from mixed, coated and elastane-containing waste.
From “Love Island for co-founders” to French industrial backing
Bertone met co-founder Monsigny through Entrepreneur First in Paris, the company-building programme that literally brings strangers together to form startups.
“It’s like Love Island for co-founders,” Bertone said. “You have three months to find a co-founder, find an idea and get an investment.”
The pair brought complementary experience. Monsigny had spent between 12 and 15 years at academic institutions developing chemical catalysts capable of breaking down complex plastics. Bertone had worked in growth roles at fashion, furniture and resale marketplace startups, with a focus on sustainability.
They bonded over their “shared sense of mission and vision”, Bertone said, as well as the speed at which they wanted to build the company.
Around two and a half years after meeting, Syntetica has grown from its two founders to a team of more than 20 people, and plans to doubt that.
Bertone, who is Italian and grew up in London, said France had been an unusually supportive place to develop a capital-intensive deeptech company.
“For us and for our type of company, it’s been incredible,” he said. “The support that we get in terms of government grants and loans, both at the national and European level, is really unique.”
Syntetica has been selected for support from the European Innovation Council Accelerator, including a €2.5 million grant and a planned multimillion-euro equity investment. It has also received non-dilutive support from Bpifrance and access to regional grants intended to finance future industrial projects.
The combination of grants, loans and private investment has allowed the company to fund expensive research and industrial development without relying entirely on venture capital.
“It’s given us a really rich combination of different financing,” Bertone said. “It enables us to go further, faster than if we were just relying on equity.”
