French startup Syntetica raises €30M for nylon recycling

A French startup developing a key technology for recycling clothing waste has secured 30 million euros in new funding, a significant investment that signals a major push to scale a solution for one of the fashion industry's most stubborn environmental challenges. Syntetica, based in Paris, announced the Series A funding round on July 16, 2026, led by the French public investment bank Bpifrance through its Ecotechnologies 2 fund.

The capital will finance the construction of Syntetica's first commercial demonstration plant in Clermont-Ferrand, France, developed in partnership with Michelin's Centre for Sustainable Materials. The facility is designed to transition the company's patented chemical recycling process from laboratory to industrial production, with a capacity to process hundreds of tonnes of textile waste annually.

Syntetica's core innovation is a process capable of recycling both Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6 from mixed post-consumer textile waste in a single reactor. This addresses a critical bottleneck, as conventional recycling typically requires these two dominant nylon types to be meticulously separated beforehand, a costly and often impractical step that has severely...