Lululemon joins $30M bet on nylon recycler Syntetica

Lululemon has backed Syntetica in a $30 million Series A, giving the French startup more capital to scale a recycling process for Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6—two widely used materials that are difficult to separate once they enter consumer textile waste streams.

CEO Marco Bertone told TechCrunch the pitch is deliberately practical: recycle mixed nylon waste into pellets that can be turned into yarn by manufacturing partners, rather than making finished textiles itself. That matters for brands under pressure to cut waste, especially as large volumes of clothing still end up in landfills and nylon prices have become less predictable.

According to Bertone, geopolitical turmoil in the oil industry over the last six months has triggered quarterly or weekly nylon price renegotiations.

“It’s been a wake-up call to many brands that have been relying on petrol-sourced nylon and petrol-sourced synthetics for pricing and convenience, and which today have seen massive shocks to their system.”

Syntetica says its model only works if recycled materials are economically competitive.

“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.”

Its partners already include Lululemon, Victoria’s Secret, and Etam, with a recycling project that could reach the market early next year. The round was also backed by apparel manufacturer MAS Holdings, an unusual move for a supply-chain player investing before a startup has reached scale.

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Funding, partners, and scale-up plans

Before the Series A, Syntetica had partnered with Michelin’s Center for Sustainable Materials to build a commercial demonstration facility in Clermont-Ferrand, Michelin’s hometown in France. The company was founded after Bertone, whose background is in fashion and secondhand e-commerce, met chemistry researcher Louis Monsigny through Entrepreneurs First at Station F in Paris. They later worked out of AgroParisTech’s lab in Reims.

Syntetica has since hired CTO Ash Ward, formerly of failed battery company Northvolt. Northvolt co-founder Peter Carlsson is also one of the startup’s advisers. Bertone said that experience has shaped a cautious scaling strategy: take risks, but not too many at once.

For now, the company is staying focused on proving it can produce hundreds of tons of pellets per year and deliver them into the clothing supply chain. After that, Bertone said, Syntetica plans to build facilities globally, close to both waste sources and textile production hubs.

The round was led by the Ecotechnologies 2 fund managed by the Green Venture team at Bpifrance as part of the France 2030 plan. Syntetica has also received backing from the European Innovation Council (EIC) through equity, grants, and its acceleration program. Other private investors include EQT Ventures, SWEN Capital Partners, and family offices.

Syntetica faces competition from startups using enzymatic recycling and from BASF, which has also developed recycled nylon. Bertone’s view, after attending industry events, is that the market is big enough for many winners: even if multiple players scaled to tens of factories, he said, that still would not fully solve the problem.