Recover secures €94M to transform textile waste into sustainable recycled fibres; here’s how

Alicante, Spain-based Recover, a producer of sustainable, premium recycled cotton fibre and cotton fibre blends, announced on Thursday that it has raised a $100M (approximately €94M) in minority equity investment led by the Sustainable Investing business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Goldman Sachs is investing alongside majority shareholder STORY3 Capital Partners. As part of the transaction, Letitia Webster, Managing Director and Chief Sustainability Officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management Division, will join the Board of Directors of Recover.

Ben Malka, Operating Partner at STORY3 and Executive Chairman of Recover, says, “Recover has perfected the art and science of scaled production of sustainable recycled cotton fibre over more than 70 years across multiple generations of the Ferre family in Spain. Today, Recover offers a solution grounded in proprietary IP that provides cost-competitive, maximum performance recycled cotton fibre for both rotor and ring-spinning applications.”

STORY3 Capital Partners is an alternative investment manager focused on the consumer value chain, including businesses at the intersection of consumer and sustainability. Since its inception in 2018, the STORY3 team has sourced, arranged and executed over $1B of capital transactions in consumer-facing businesses. The firm pairs deep industry expertise, operating support, and ‘unique’ transactional experience to support value creation for its partners.

Capital utilisation

Recover says it will use the proceeds to accelerate its global expansion and production capacity, allowing more adoption of sustainability initiatives by leading brands and retailers. Currently, the company serves retailers, brands and vendors, including Primark, Inditex, C&A, Revolve, and Lands’ End.

Recover’s proprietary recycled cotton fibre lowers the carbon and water intensity of the textile supply chain, addressing the apparel industry’s contribution to one of the world’s leading causes of environmental deterioration.

The company also says it will increase its production to over 350,000 metric tons of recycled cotton fibre per year by 2026. Based on industry research, this will save up to 5 trillion litres of water annually — equivalent to the drinking water consumed by over 4.5 billion people each year — and also allow the reductions of carbon emissions, energy and land use relative to the conventional cotton fibre, says the company.

Circular fashion for all

Recover is a global producer of low-impact, high-quality recycled cotton fibre and cotton fibre blends. The company’s premium environmental friendly, cost-competitive products are created in partnership with the supply chain for global retailers and brands, offering a sustainable solution to close the loop on fashion.

According to the Higg MSI, Recover recycled fibre outperforms conventional cotton and organic cotton across 5 and 4 impact categories respectively: Global warming potential, Eutrophication, Water scarcity, Fossil fuel depletion, and Chemistry.

As a fourth-generation, family-owned company with a 70-year long history in the textile industry, Recover is on a mission to scale its proprietary technology to make a lasting positive impact on the environment and partner with brands/retailers and other change-makers to meet the industry’s sustainability targets.

The company has opened new manufacturing hubs in Pakistan and Bangladesh, with additional hubs in Bangladesh and Vietnam due to open in the near term.