Recycling Story / Avantium Interview Exclusive

Polycotton Recycling Faces a Scale Test That Chemistry Alone Cannot Solve

Introduction: Blended textile waste is no longer being discussed as a marginal recycling problem but as an industrial systems challenge shaped by regulation, cost and infrastructure. In that debate, Peter Mangnus, Business Director Dawn Technology at Avantium, argues that progress will depend less on scientific novelty alone than on aligning feedstock, offtake, finance and policy support.

Subir Ghosh

21 April 2026

5 minutes

Long Story, Cut Short

Dawn’s argument is that blended textile recycling becomes viable only when policy, feedstock quality, finance and offtake move together.
The commercial value sits mainly in cotton conversion, with polyester recovery important but financially secondary in mixed waste streams.
Scaling depends less on laboratory success than on contaminant removal, solvent recovery and policy regimes that reward circular materials.

In Dawn’s model, the stronger commercial driver comes from converting cellulosic content, with polyester recovery remaining important but secondary to the wider economics of industrial deployment.

COTTON VALUE In Dawn’s model, the stronger commercial driver comes from converting cellulosic content, with polyester recovery remaining important but secondary to the wider economics of industrial deployment. Avantium

texfash: Blended textile waste, especially polycotton, has long been treated as a structural dead end. What has changed in recent years to make serious investment in solutions now viable?
Peter Mangnus: Policy pressure has intensified. Extended producer responsibility (EPR), landfill bans, and recycled‑content mandates have transformed blended textile waste from an externality into a material strategic risk.

Dawn Technology enables the conversion of all cotton and other cellulosic fibres into sugars and biobased derivatives, allowing polyester to be effectively separated from blended textile waste. Once separated, both material streams can be fully valorised: PET fibres can be chemically recycled back into virgin‑quality PET, while the sugar‑derived biobased building blocks can be used to produce new materials such as biobased PEF.

Across the value chain—collection, sorting, processing, and end-markets—where do you see the most binding constraint today: feedstock quality, process economics, or demand for recycled outputs?
Peter Mangnus: The core challenge lies in achieving viable process economics at scale. This depends on reliable feedstock volumes, consistent sorting quality, predictable offtake commitments, and supportive financial mechanisms. None of these elements fail in isolation—but misalignment between them undermines overall viability.

Large‑scale automated sorting and the removal of so‑called hardpoints (such as zippers and buttons) can significantly reduce raw‑material costs. However, most chemical recycling technologies today remain unable to compete on price with oil‑based virgin PET, or even with mechanically recycled PET. As a result, additional financial support mechanisms will be required to bridge this cost gap during the scale‑up phase.

Many circularity solutions remain at pilot stage. What distinguishes the approaches that are likely to reach industrial scale from those that will not?
Peter Mangnus: The technologies with the strongest commercialization potential are those that produce high‑value outputs - typically non‑drop‑in products with a distinct and defensible value proposition. Higher‑value products enable a more realistic scale‑up path from pilot to industrial scale, without requiring immediate, massive capacity to achieve profitability.

By contrast, technologies focused on producing drop‑in materials from textile waste face significant scaling challenges. Competing in commodity markets demands enormous scale‑up factors and correspondingly large capital investments, making it difficult for these technologies to reach economic viability within acceptable risk and time horizons.

TAGS

Company:

Avantium

Country:

Netherlands

Individual:

Peter Mangnus

Sector:

Recycling

Dawn separates polycotton into glucose derivatives and a recoverable polyester stream. Where does the core novelty lie—in the chemistry, in process integration, or in the quality of the outputs?
Peter Mangnus: The novelty lies in the ability to fully convert cotton into glucose and oligomers without generating side products, followed by efficient conversion into the intermediate CMF. This CMF can then be selectively separated from the water–acid mixture using an organic solvent with a high affinity for CMF. As a result, the innovation spans both the underlying chemistry and the process design.

Crucially, the process treats cotton not as waste, but as a renewable carbon feedstock, while preserving polyester in a form suitable for high‑quality recycling rather than downcycling. This combination - full valorisation of the cellulosic fraction alongside true recyclability of polyester - is what unlocks industrial relevance.

The process positions cotton as a feedstock for chemicals while enabling polyester recycling. How do you balance these two value streams commercially?
Peter Mangnus: The business case is primarily driven by the value created from the cotton fraction. While PET fibres constitute an excellent feedstock for chemical depolymerization, they are, from a financial perspective, a secondary by‑product. As a result, the process is best suited for textile waste streams with a relatively high cotton content.

Avantium’s Dawn Technology won the Mills Fabrica innovation challenge. What did that process reveal about how brands and industry stakeholders evaluate such technologies—particularly in terms of readiness, scalability, and commercial relevance?
Peter Mangnus: The ability to separate and valorise both the cotton (and other cellulosic fibres) and the polyester represents a critical breakthrough, enabling the full recycling of polycotton textile waste. Producing a cotton‑free polyester fibre unlocks true fibre‑to‑fibre recycling—an objective that is high on the agenda of many brand owners.

At the same time, brands are looking for solutions that offer:

a credible pathway to scale,
compatibility with existing supply chains, and
end products that fit within current certification and reporting frameworks.

Engagement with brands further shows a shift in behaviour: rather than waiting for technologies to fully de‑risk independently, brands are increasingly taking an active role by supplying waste streams, co‑developing specifications, and validating offtake.

Peter Mangnus

Business Director, Dawn Technology

Avantium

Large scale automated sorting and the removal of so called hardpoints (such as zippers and buttons) can significantly reduce raw material costs. However, most chemical recycling technologies today remain unable to compete on price with oil based virgin PET, or even with mechanically recycled PET. As a result, additional financial support mechanisms will be required to bridge this cost gap during the scale up phase.

Post-consumer textile waste is highly variable and often contaminated. How sensitive is the Dawn process to feedstock variability, and what does that imply for real-world deployment?
Peter Mangnus: Dawn Technology is largely insensitive to the processing of contaminated blended textiles. In practice, the specifications of the textile waste processed by Dawn will be defined primarily by the requirements of downstream polyester recyclers. Within the Dawn process, it is critical that contaminants and dyes transferred into the sugar–acid liquid phase can be effectively removed during downstream purification.

Scaling from pilot to commercial deployment is where many technologies falter. What are the critical steps between current validation and full-scale operation
Peter Mangnus: The key scale‑up challenges are achieving effective contaminant separation at industrial scale and ensuring efficient recovery and recycling of the hydrochloric acid (HCl) and solvents used in the process.

Policy frameworks, trade dynamics, and definitions of “recycled” or “bio-based” vary across regions. How do these differences affect where and how you plan to scale?
Peter Mangnus: Assuming sufficient availability of textile waste, policy frameworks will be the primary factor determining where and how scale‑up occurs. Strong extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes and recycled‑content mandates are the key drivers.

Over the next decade, what role do you expect Dawn to play within the broader textile system: a niche solution for specific waste streams, or part of a wider shift in how blended materials are designed and processed?
Peter Mangnus: Dawn has the potential to process a broad range of cellulosic‑containing materials—including cotton, viscose, and lyocell—provided they contain a significant cellulosic fraction alongside other synthetic fibres. This wide applicability also positions the technology as an enabler of design rules for textile circularity.

Over time, we expect a feedback loop to emerge, in which processing capabilities increasingly inform upstream material and product design choices. In that sense, Dawn is not merely a waste‑treatment solution, but a contributor to a broader transition toward designing textiles with their end‑of‑life pathways explicitly in mind.

Why It Matters

Policy tools such as extended producer responsibility and recycled content mandates are turning blended waste into a strategic industrial issue.
The main bottleneck is process economics at scale, where feedstock, sorting, finance and offtake must align for commercial viability.
Automated sorting and removing zippers buttons hardpoints can reduce input costs before blended waste enters chemical recycling systems.
Most recycling routes still struggle to beat virgin or recycled PET on price, despite improving technical performance.

How Dawn Works

Dawn converts cotton and cellulosics into sugars and derivatives, while preserving polyester for high-quality recycling.
The technological novelty spans chemistry process integration and output quality, especially cotton conversion without generating unwanted side products.
The business case is driven mainly by the cotton fraction, making higher-cotton waste streams commercially more attractive.
Feedstock contamination matters chiefly where downstream polyester recyclers impose tighter specifications on the recovered polyester stream.

Subir Ghosh

SUBIR GHOSH is a Kolkata-based independent journalist-writer-researcher who writes about environment, corruption, crony capitalism, conflict, wildlife, and cinema. He is the author of two books, and has co-authored two more with others. He writes, edits, reports and designs. He is also a professionally trained and qualified photographer.

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