Hi, I'm Catharina.
I'm here with Dennis today.
We're going to talk about a very exciting new scale-up,
RE&UP, and the opportunities of circularity.
Hi, Dennis, thank you so much for joining me today.
Thanks for having me.
Dennis, we have heard so much the last days and during Climate
Week about this opportunity of circularity and scaling that globally.
As a European company, what is your plan to take advantage of
that global opportunity?
As a European company, we obviously get a lot of news, you
know, about the need for circularity, especially in the
textile space.
And we've been building a circular business model in our
factories that is now operating for, you know, several years.
The end product is proven to be able to use in the fashion
industry, where the requirements are very high, and we are ready
to scale now.
And in order to be able to tackle the waste problem in
Europe, we are in very advanced stage now to start scaling and
building factories in Europe to be able to actually handle the
domestic waste.
And after Europe, what are your next plans?
We have concrete plans moving into Middle East, Asia, and, of
course, United States as well.
Obviously, you know, we need to really make an impact and the
waste problem in the textile space is amazingly big.
So, in order to be able to really address that problem, you
really need to scale, and you need to scale fast. Because if
we don't do anything today, the problems will just accumulate,
they will be much bigger later on.
So our intention is to scale way beyond the million tons, you
know, of textile waste to be handled, and we can do that in
many different locations.
What do you think is the key success factor of RE&UP?
What really makes you one of the companies at the forefront of
textile- to-textile recycling?
I wasn't around at the time, but the founding company and the
shareholder of RE&UP, is a textile conglomerate and we are
celebrating our 120th anniversary this year.
We were born in a textile environment having all the
knowledge of what is needed in the textile industry to produce
the right product in terms of quality and pricing to be used
again in the textile industry at scale.
And I think that makes that makes a tremendous difference.
You know, we know what we're talking about.
We use actually our textile engineers that were dealing with
yarns and fabrics to start developing processes that can
deliver the right end product in terms of textile-to-textile recycling.
The other big advantage is what we did is we started to find
ways how to use post-consumer waste because this is really
where the problem is.
So we are able to handle blends of materials, colored materials
and turn them into white, near-virgin materials that can
really be used in the textile industry.
Again, I think these two factors-- really know what we
talk about and really addressing the real problem in the industry-
that's what makes us, you know, who we are.
It's incredible.
And I think the RE&UP story has gotten a lot of positive
feedback generally throughout the last months and years, but
also throughout the last days here in New York at Climate Week.
What are you going to take away from this week?
What are you going to take home from Climate Week, and what will
help you on your journey forward?
Yeah.
I want to say something else first.
Sure.
You know, I mean, you're right.
We get a lot of attention and.
in the early days, it almost sounded too good to be true.
But we have factories running now, and a tremendous capacity
is available to recycle textile waste.
When you look at the big scale, it's not big enough yet.
We . . . but we really want to grow our business.
But the proof is now out there, we can do this.
So it's not too good to be true.
It's available.
And I think New York is a fantastic city.
There are great people here today, like-minded people.
And what I understand is that from all the conversations that
I attended and the people that I met, people are looking for
action because there's been a lot of talks, but we really need
to scale this industry now so that we can really make it circular.
And we are about action.
So that's really what I like.
What I will take home is networking opportunities.
So there's a lot of great people that we meet, that we can
collaborate with because we can't obviously do this alone.
We need to do this together.
It's a circular economy that we are dealing with.
So that, and I think maybe the most important thing is that we
also here to educate people because people need to
understand what is actually possible in order to brainstorm
about how we can scale this further.
And there are a lot of unknowns still.
And I think we are here to explain to the private sector,
but also to the governments, what is possible.
And from there, we can design models in order to make it
actually work and scale this business further.
Thanks, Dennis.
Any final thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's hard work.
In order to do this very quickly,
it requires a lot of dedication and a lot of networking.
We need to reach out to many different people, but we need to
focus a lot on execution as well.
So we have a fantastic partnership with BCG, Boston
Consulting Group.
You know, there's a core team now that is working, you know,
fully and dedicated with RE&UP in order to make this possible.
It's a door opener, but also on the execution side, you know, a
fantastic help.
Well, thank you very much, Dennis.
We're very much looking to the next steps together as well.
Thank you.