#Retail & Brands

2023-10-26

Inditex signs a three-year agreement to buy textile to textile recycled polyester cycora® for over €70 million

Inditex has formed a strategic partnership with Ambercycle, a Los Angeles based material science company, to help scale textile to textile recycled polyester. As part of this collaboration, the company has signed a three-year agreement to buy a significant portion of the annual production of cycora® – an innovative material made from post-industrial and post-consumer polyester waste – for more than 70 million euros.

This purchase commitment will be key to support the construction of Ambercycle’s first commercial-scale textile regeneration factory. The scaled application of Ambercycle's innovative molecular regeneration technology will make circular materials more widely available and accessible in the fashion supply chain. Production of cycora® at Ambercycle’s new commercial plant is expected to begin around 2025 and continue to be incorporated in Inditex product offerings over the following three years.

Inditex aims to have 100% of its textile products to be made exclusively from materials with a smaller environmental footprint by 2030. As part of this commitment, the Group expect to have 25% of the textile fibers made from next-generation materials that do not yet exist at an industrial scale. Cycora®, a regenerated polyester created from end-of-life textiles, seamlessly replaces conventional polyester.

As part of this agreement, Zara Athleticz is also launching today its first capsule collection in collaboration with Ambercycle, featuring technical pieces crafted with up to 50% cycora® content. It exemplifies the immense potential of innovative materials to create highly functional stylish products with lower environmental impact. The collection will be available at Zara.com.

"Ambercycle’s goal is to enable circularity by replacing virgin polyester with textile-to-textile regenerated cycora®. Our partnership with Inditex represents a monumental leap towards realizing circularity at scale in the fashion industry" said Shay Sethi, CEO of Ambercycle.

Javier Losada, Inditex’s Chief Sustainability Officer added, "At Inditex we are committed to achieving circularity in the fashion industry. We want to drive innovation to scale up new solutions, processes and materials to achieve textile to textile recycling. Ambercycle’s groundbreaking molecular regeneration technology transforms end-of-life textiles into new materials, effectively reducing waste and emissions in the production cycle”.

Inditex’s Sustainability Innovation Hub

This collaboration is part of Inditex’s Sustainability Innovation Hub, an innovation platform that works alongside start-ups, academic institutions and tech centers to promote and scale new materials, technologies and processes that reduce the environmental footprint of fashion products and help move towards more sustainable and circular solutions.

The purpose of the Inditex Sustainability Innovation Hub is to minimize the environmental impact of raw materials and processes used in the textile industry. Each new proposal is evaluated considering its impact on social aspects, circularity, biodiversity and animal welfare, in addition to undergoing an environmental life cycle analysis. This analysis, performed on a lab test, includes sixteen different impacts in areas such as emissions, water and land use, among others. All of this contributes to ensuring that these innovations have the potential to deliver a lower environmental impact compared to currently available alternatives.

Inditex will fund the university education of 50 female textile industry workers in Bangladesh for five years

Inditex and the Asian University for Women have launched a new scholarship program to support the academic training of female textile factory workers in Bangladesh. Inditex will allocate €3.75 million to fund this initiative, enabling 50 women to access pre-university and university education over the next five years, providing them with new opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Inditex reports strong Q1 2024 performance

Inditex's sales grew by 7.1% in Q1 2024, reaching €8.2 billion. Sales in constant currency rose by 10.6%. Gross profit increased by 7.3% to €4.9 billion, with a gross margin of 60.6%. Operating expenses increased by 6.4%, below the sales growth rate. EBITDA rose by 8% to €2.4 billion, while EBIT grew by 10.3% to €1.6 billion. Net income saw a 10.8% increase, reaching €1.3 billion.

Recover™ secures multi-year recycled cotton agreement with H&M

Recover™ has signed a multi-year agreement with H&M to support the integration of its recycled cotton fiber, RCotton, for use in H&M’s products. Since early 2024, H&M and Recover™ have collaborated on product development, which now enables scaled commercial introduction of Recover™ mechanically recycled cotton into H&M’s collections.

GORE-TEX® KIDSWEAR launches innovative membership scheme for kids’ jackets

With its revolutionary new membership model, GORE-TEX® Kidswear now offers families a simple, flexible and sustainable way of kitting out their children in top-quality jackets. It is aimed at the parents of children aged between five and ten and kicks off with a choice of functional winter jackets.

ALADIN paves the way for circular and demand-driven textile production in Europe

Textile production can be organized sustainably by utilizing short supply chains and preventing overproduction. This can already be achieved today by intelligently connecting and efficiently utilizing existing infrastructure. At the same time, production becomes circular when innovative technologies and materials are used that enable high-quality recycling. The ALADIN research project, launched in May 2026 and co-funded with five million euros under the EU Horizon Europe program, is creating the conditions for this.

Katharina Obergruber appointed to the Management Board of Sandler AG

The Supervisory Board of Sandler AG has appointed Katharina Obergruber to the company’s Management Board. Effective September 1, 2026, the Board will consist of Philipp Ebbinghaus (CEO), Dr. Ulrich Hornfeck (currently CCO, future COO), and Katharina Obergruber (CCO). Katharina Obergruber, currently Chief Sales Officer Hygiene and member of the Management Team of Sandler AG, will assume responsibility for all sales activities as Chief Commercial Officer. She will assume this role from Dr. Ulrich Hornfeck, who will focus primarily on production and supply chain topics.

Ence and ShareTex begin initial testing of the ATENEA innovation project to promote textile recycling in Spain

Ence and ShareTex are making progress on the Atenea R&D project, which aims to develop a complete value chain for textile recycling in Spain. Specifically, the goal of the ATENEA project—which is funded by the Center for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI)—is to connect all the necessary stages for the recovery of textile waste, from collection and management, through recycling and transformation into new raw materials, to their incorporation into new textile products.

DePoly Inaugurates its Showcase Plant in Monthey Switzerland

What if used plastic bottles, PET packaging material and polyester textiles could become raw materials just as high performing as virgin resources? That is the ambition of DePoly, a circular materials company based in Sion, Switzerland which inaugurated its Showcase Plant in Monthey on July 6th & 7th. The first depolymerization facility of its kind and scale in Switzerland, this industrial Showcase Plant represents a major milestone in the company's growth and its journey toward commercialization.