Reju, a French specialist in textile circularity, has secured €135 million in public support from the Netherlands to accelerate an industrial-scale facility designed to turn post-consumer clothing back into new polyester feedstock. The funding was awarded through the Dutch Nationale Investeringsregeling Klimaatprojecten Industrie (NIKI) scheme and will underpin Reju’s planned regeneration hub at Chemelot Industrial Park.
Reju said the Chemelot site will process used textiles that might otherwise be landfilled or incinerated, converting them into “Reju Polyester.” The company claims the output delivers 50% lower carbon emissions than virgin polyester while also capturing residual fractions that typically fall out of conventional recycling streams. By scaling textile-to-textile regeneration, the project aims to reduce the environmental burden of textile waste and increase the availability of circular raw materials that can displace fossil-based fibres.
“We are grateful to the Government of the Netherlands and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate for supporting the scale-up of commercial technologies that can deliver measurable emissions reductions and accelerate the transition to a truly circular textile industry,” commented Patrik Frisk, CEO of Reju.
“This award is a strong vote of confidence in our technology and our team. At Chemelot, we will deliver circular raw materials at scale, reduce emissions across textile value chains, and establish a replicable blueprint for circular textiles in Europe.”
The Chemelot Industrial Park location was selected for its established industrial ecosystem, including shared utilities and logistics infrastructure—factors that can reduce project execution risk and support reliable input and output flows. Reju also said the project is intended to enable fully traceable circular supply chains, strengthening verification and improving the displacement of virgin fibres.
The Dutch award comes as Reju is scaling across multiple geographies. The company recently announced plans for a new circular textile hub in Lacq, France, which will use its proprietary depolymerisation process to convert textiles sourced from French waste streams into rBHET—an intermediate used to produce new polyester, branded by the company as Reju PET.
Reju has also set out plans for its first US industrial facility in Rochester, New York, intended to complement its existing demonstration operations. The company’s demo plant, Regeneration Hub Zero, is already running in Frankfurt, giving it an operational base as it moves from demonstration to industrial deployment.
With the NIKI funding, Reju’s Chemelot development signals another step toward scaling textile-to-textile regeneration from early plants into larger, repeatable hubs—an approach the company says could be replicated across Europe to support circular materials at meaningful volume.
