Singapore invests in sustainable Finnish fiber firm

clothes textile
Photo: Lauren Fleischmann on Unsplash

Instead of just chucking textile, cardboard and agricultural waste in the bin, Finnish start-up Infinited Fiber Company (IFC) turns this otherwise unusable material into new fibres. And now Singapore-based Royal Golden Eagle Pte Ltd (RGE) has decided to chip in by investing in the sustainable project.

Investors already include Swedish H&M Group as well as Finnish Virala and Fortum.

“This new financing will enable us to finalise the scaling of the technology and to extend our fiber production capacity to enable global leading brands to bring capsule collections to the markets in 2020,” Mr Petri Alava, CEO of IFC, said in a press release.

At RGE in Singapore the excitement has also been difficult to hide.

“RGE is keen to support innovative next-generation solutions that can be applied at industrial scale. IFC’s technology is exciting as it brings together the use of recycled feedstock and clean solvent in a circular fashion to produce fibres,” Mr Tey Wei Lin, President of RGE, said in the press release.

“As a leading viscose producer, we strive to continually seek solutions to improve the  sustainability performance of our manufacturing practices and products,” the company President added.

IFC started operating a pilot plant in March 2018 in Espoo, Finland, which produces textiles for testing purposes for several global brands.

“Recently, the company leased production facilities in Valkeakoski city, Southern Finland, for a new pre-commercial 500-ton per annum plant and customer training centre that will start up in early 2020,” the press release states.

The process from waste to textile happens in three stages. First, the fibres are separated, secondly they are turned into liquid, and thirdly the liquid is turned back into usable fibres.

This way, textiles can be reused again and again, according to IFC.

So far, IFC has raised 8 million Euros in funds this year.

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