Lululemon backs Syntetica in $30M round for nylon recycling

French startup Syntetica has closed a $30 million Series A round backed by activewear brand Lululemon, funding a recycling process for Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6 — two types of nylon that, according to CEO Marco Bertone, can’t easily be sorted apart once mixed in textile waste collected from consumers.

The round lands amid six months of geopolitical turmoil in the oil industry, which Bertone said has forced quarterly or weekly nylon price renegotiations. That volatility, he said, has been a wake-up call for brands that relied on petrol-sourced nylon and synthetics for pricing and convenience and are now facing shocks to their supply chains. “We have built the company with the clarity that there’s no green premium. That if you want to scale real solutions for a sustainable world, it needs to be cost competitive, highly scalable, and you need to build partnerships from the very start.” Bertone said.

Rather than making textiles itself, Syntetica will supply pellets that partners such as MAS Holdings, an apparel manufacturer that also invested in the Series A round, can spin into yarn. The startup previously partnered with Michelin’s Centre for Sustainable Materials to establish a commercial demonstration facility in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and its recycling project with partners could go to market early next year. Syntetica’s near-term focus is on demonstrating it can produce hundreds of tons of pellets per year; after that, Bertone said, Syntetica will build facilities around the world, close to waste sources and close to textile production.

Syntetica was founded by Bertone and chemistry researcher Louis Monsigny, and later hired Ash Ward as CTO; Ward previously worked at Northvolt, a battery company that failed, whose co-founder Peter Carlsson now advises Syntetica. Bertone said the team’s experience with the risks of scaling shapes how much risk it is willing to take on at once, distinguishing the comfort with risk that startups need from taking on too much at once. Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank, led the round, with additional backing from the European Innovation Council (EIC), the European Union’s innovation agency, which has provided equity, grants and acceleration support; private investors EQT Ventures and SWEN Capital Partners also took part.

Syntetica faces competition from chemical company BASF, which has developed recycled nylon, and from startups such as Epoch Biodesign and Samsara Eco, both previously backed by Lululemon; Bertone said that even if every competitor scaled to tens of factories, the industry still would not solve the waste problem, and that everyone needs to succeed for the sector to succeed as a whole.

Why it matters

Syntetica’s raise shows fashion brands investing directly in supply-chain circularity to hedge against volatile, oil-dependent synthetic-material prices and to meet incoming regulatory demands.