Resortecs partners with AMANN Group to scale Design-for-Disassembly in fashion

Resortecs and AMANN Group partnered to industrialize Design-for-Disassembly in fashion using Resortecs’ Smart Stitch™ heat-activated threads. This integrates circularity, enabling automatic garment disassembly, optimizing material recovery, and high-grade recycling at scale.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – April 15, 2026 – Resortecs, is proud to announce its partnership with AMANN Group, one of the top three sewing thread manufacturers in the world. Together, the two companies are bringing design-for-disassembly to industrial scale, embedding circularity directly into the way garments are made.
For AMANN, this collaboration represents a significant step beyond their traditional thread manufacturing, providing new opportunities to offer services beyond traditional threads, and focusing on technical performance and circularity. This move solidifies AMANN’s position as a comprehensive solution provider for the future of the textile industry. Conversely, for Resortecs, entrusting AMANN with thread logistics and quality assurance allows them to fully dedicate their expertise to the most vital challenge: establishing the textile recycling ecosystem through intensified focus on preprocessing, waste management, and optimizing feedstock from both pre- and post-consumer textile waste.

The challenge

Today, most garments are not designed for disassembly, which makes extending their life through reuse, repair, and personalisation, as well as complex end-of-life processes like recycling, challenging, costly, and limited in quality.
Although the industry has focused on improving recycling processes, scalability remains out of reach because the garments themselves are not designed to be taken apart, hindering all forms of circularity.

The solution

The partnership combines Smart Stitch™, a range of heat-activated sewing threads engineered by Resortecs, with AMANN’s industrial expertise in thread manufacturing and global distribution.
This integration allows brands and manufacturers to incorporate disassembly capability directly into garments without changing the design, production, or performance of the item. When needed, the garment can be automatically disassembled using Smart Disassembly™, which facilitates faster processing, delabeling, higher material recovery, and improved recycling outcomes.
This collaboration transforms garments into recoverable assets, shifting the industry from waste management to proactive value retention. By leveraging Smart Stitch™, brands can now implement tiered disassembly strategies that make circularity both operational and profitable at scale:
● Repair & Resale: Facilitates rapid delabeling of unsold or Grade B stock for reuse and targeted disassembly for repairs, such as replacing shoe soles or reflective ribbons.
● Material Revalorization: Enables the recovery of high-value components and trims (evidenced by our work with Amer Sport’s Peak Performance to salvage premium down without quality loss).
● Feedstock Optimization: Provides the “clean” material streams required for high-grade chemical and mechanical recycling by fully separating components into pure textile fractions.

By optimizing recovery at every stage, from production scrap to end-of-life, this partnership turns circularity into a scalable, economically viable business model for high-volume manufacturing.

The collaboration also leverages AMANN’s position as one of the leading sewing thread manufacturers worldwide, delivering several strategic advantages for partners. With manufacturing infrastructure across 7 global locations, AMANN significantly reduces the distance between thread production and garment CMT (Cut, Make, Trim) facilities, streamlining logistics and lowering carbon footprints.

Furthermore, brands can now easily nominate these specialized threads through AMANN’s established procurement channels, accelerating adoption and bypassing traditional supply chain hurdles. Partners also benefit from world-class technical support, after-sales service, and a high level of production homogeneity that ensures consistent quality across different manufacturing regions.

A new standard

Resortecs and AMANN Group share a common vision: to make Design-for-Disassembly the new standard in fashion and textiles.
True circularity means designing products that will never become waste, that will evolve, not merely finding new uses for existing waste.

Designing for true circularity is about creating products that evolve and are fundamentally designed not to become waste. It’s a proactive approach that goes beyond simply finding new uses for existing materials.

Design to Evolve, Build to Disassemble. 
Engineered by Resortecs, now produced by AMANN Group.

PRESS RELEASE | PRESS KIT

A Circularity Experience by NOOSA® and Resortecs in collaboration with MAD Brussels.

What if circularity didn’t start at the end of a product’s life, but at its very beginning?

On the eve of Textile Recycling Expo and Future Fabrics Expo, Resortecs and NOOSA® invite you to step inside a new logic for textiles and fashion, one where materials are engineered for performance and products are designed to evolve.
A guided journey across the value chain:
From fiber to disassembly, from design decisions to end-of-life outcomes, you’ll experience how circularity becomes real when systems are built to work together.

What to Expect

The afternoon begins at NOOSA’s facility in Brussels, where you’ll discover how next-generation PLA fibers are engineered for circularity without compromising on performance.
You will witness a live demonstration of the NOOCYCLE® recycling process and explore how bio-based materials can be designed to retain value across multiple lifecycles.

From there, you will go to Resortecs, where you will experience the focus shifts from material innovation to product architecture. Through a live demonstration, you’ll see how garments designed with Smart Stitch™ can be disassembled automatically, separating components cleanly and unlocking high-quality material recovery.
Together, these two moments tell one story: circularity is not a single innovation, but a system.

The evening continues at MAD Brussels, which will host the closing networking drink in its space dedicated to fashion and design innovation, bringing together industry leaders, innovators, and decision-makers.

Programme:

15:00 — Live demonstration at NOOSA®
16:00 — Transfer to Resortecs
16:30 — Resortecs presentation & Disassembly demo
17:30 — Transfer to MAD Brussels
18:00 — Networking drinks at MAD Brussels
20:30 — End

Why Attend

This event is designed for those who are not looking for inspiration alone, but for practical pathways to act.
Whether you are working on materials, product design, sustainability strategy, or end-of-life solutions, this experience will give you a clearer understanding of how the pieces connect and where the real leverage lies.

Two Ways to Join

To accommodate different schedules, participation is flexible:
● A limited group will join the full experience, including the NOOSA^® visit, Resortecs demonstration, and transfers
● at MAD Brussels for the networking evening, an opportunity to connect with the broader ecosystem, arriving in Brussels for the upcoming industry events

REGISTER NOW

Once registered, your participation will be confirmed by email, as places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis due to limited capacity.

Circularity doesn’t happen at the end.
It is designed, engineered, and built in, from the very start.

Belgian-based textile-tech startup plans to deploy 5 disassembly lines across Europe within 5 years, directly addressing European textile waste challenge.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – Nov. 18, 2025 – Resortecs, the pioneering textile disassembly technology company, today announced it has raised €6 million in Series A to complete development of continuous industrial disassembly lines.

The round was led by Goldwin Play Earth Fund, a CVC arm of Goldwin, a Japanese premium outdoor apparel manufacturer, Belgian sovereign fund SFPIM (via the Ecological transition envelop, a delegated mission of the Belgian Federal government), and the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund); combining industrial, governmental, and fashion sector expertise.

Current investors including makesense, Trividend, ScaleFund, finance&invest.brussels, Fashion for Good and historical business angels also participated in the round.

The Series A funding will enable Resortecs to complete development of its first continuous industrial disassembly line, scaling processing capacity tenfold to 3000 metric tonnes per year by 2027. The company aims to deploy five disassembly lines across Europe within five years, creating the pre-processing infrastructure needed for true circular fashion at scale.

“By building several decentralised pre-processing plants across Europe within the next five years, we enable local, plug-and-play solutions that eliminate logistical complexity and waste ownership. Thanks to our close connections with over 80 recyclers worldwide, brands can simply drop off their end-of-life products and we handle the rest.”
Cédric Vanhoeck, co-founder and CEO of Resortecs.

By taking care of logistics, disassembly, and recycler connections, Resortecs allows brands to process end-of-life products locally, without facing the complexity of handling waste or needing to build new infrastructure. For recyclers, this means a steady, high-quality feedstock supply at drastically lower preparation costs, enabling them to operate at scale and focus on material regeneration rather than costly pre-processing.

Together, this model makes textile-to-textile recycling economically and operationally seamless, paving the way to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint by 1 billion metric tonnes of CO₂ by 2050.

PRESS RELEASE | PRESS KIT

HNST Studio, the Antwerp-based label dedicated to creating jeans that embody transparency and circularity, partners with Belgian eco-design innovator Resortecs to launch new products made to be unmade—easy to disassemble for repair and recycling at the end of life.

The partnership debuts with the newly introduced Geri (for women) and Simon (for men) pants: crafted with up to 70% recycled cotton, these are HNST’s first jeans to feature an elastic waistband and drawstrings for unparalleled day-to-day comfort and flexibility. 

Completely eco-designed for recycling, the jeans’ waistbands are stitched using Resortecs’ Smart Stitch™, an award-winning thread engineered to disappear under heat. This thread change at the design phase ensures that the jeans can be disassembled without manual intervention at the end of their lifecycle—allowing for their recyclable fabric to be automatically sorted out of the non-recyclable materials added to the waistband for more comfort. 

“Our other jeans didn’t have elastic waistbands because they would be critical blockers for recycling. Collaborating with Resortecs allowed us to explore new possibilities to give our customers more comfort without compromising our non-negotiable commitment to circularity” stated Eva Engelen, Sustainability and Product Manager at HNST.

“We are two Belgian innovators trying to rewrite the future of fashion in a circular way,” said Cédric Vanhoeck, CEO at Resortecs. “This partnership with HNST showcases how our technology can unlock new possibilities for fashion players that want to design for recycling while keeping the creativity, functionality, and quality of their products”, he added.

The Simon and Geri pants are just the first drop of the HNST x Resortecs partnership. Both companies are committed to further integrating Resortecs’ design-for-disassembly solutions into other HNST designs, solidifying their shared vision of establishing circularity as the standard in the fashion industry. Consumers everywhere can now shop the collection at letsbehonest.eu and at select independent retailers in Europe, North America, and Japan.

Resortecs, Tomorrowland, Paul Bowens, and Amandine David are the big winners of the Henry van de Velde Awards 2023 !

On Tuesday evening, February 7, all winners of the Henry van de Velde Awards received their coveted prize at Bozar in Brussels. In addition to the announcement of who won gold, silver and bronze within the 9 project categories, the winners of the 4 main prizes and the Public Award were also announced.

The jury of the Henry van de Velde Awards, one of the largest award ceremonies in Belgium, “believes in the impact and growth of the company and hopes that their innovative developments will now also find their way into the design world,” according to the statement about the award ceremony.

Henry van de Velde Award for Resortecs

The Henry van de Velde Awards are often referred to as the Oscars of design in Flanders. They are the oldest (this year is the 29th edition), best known and most prestigious design awards in Belgium. Winning an award, therefore, opens many doors, at home and abroad. ​​​​The awards are organized annually by Flanders DC, but the selection of the winners is always done by a carefully composed jury. In addition to chairman Chris Baelus, members of the jury this year included Herman Konings, Katrien Laporte, Max Borka, Elien Haentjens, Ronald Bastiaens and Siegrid Demyttenaere.

Resortecs was considered by the jury a role model in applying the principles of ecodesign. In 2021, Resortecs was also crowned Changemaker of the Year at the Belgian Fashion Awards. 

Other parties from the fashion and textile industry can be found among the other winners of the Henry van de Velde Awards. For example, Amandine David received the Young Talent Award. David specializes in traditional crafts such as weaving and pottery in combination with digital production. MyBlanket won Gold in the Consumer Awards category for a rain cover that wheelchair users can attach over their legs without assistance or standing up. No Time To Waste won the Design Research Awards category, which uses fluff, a by-product of the textile industry, and explores its possibilities.

The Henry van de Velde Awards are organized annually in Flanders DC and were made possible thanks to the support of the Flemish Agency for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO), Bozar, Z33, the Public Waste Agency of Flanders (OVAM), the Flemish Environment Agency (VMM) and Bokrijk.

More information via ​https://www.henryvandevelde.be/

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – Wedze, the winter-sports brand of French giant Decathlon, partnered with Belgian innovator Resortecs to launch a fully recyclable ski jacket using the start-up’s design-for-disassembly technology. 

Different from normal ski jackets, which are extremely difficult to recycle due to their complex material composition, this flagship is made of 63% recycled polyester, and 23% of the fabrics are dyed using dope dyeing – one of the most water-efficient dying techniques. 

As making a completely mono-material jacket isn’t yet possible , Wedze found in Resortecs the ideal partner to bring its first fully recyclable ski jacket to life. The start-up’s Smart Stitch™ threads melt and disappear when exposed to temperatures above 190°C, ensuring that the non-recyclable zippers, press buttons and elastics bands can be easily separated from the polyester parts when it is time for recycling. 

“Clients who want to join our circularity efforts can return their used jackets when they are no longer fit for use, and we’ll recycle them into new products.” Explains Fern S., Product Engineer and Sustainable Development Leader at Wedze.  

“We are excited to launch a product with Wedze because, like the entire Decathlon group, they are known for their efforts to develop more sustainable products. The jacket looks great and has infinite possibilities for its next lifecycle.” – Cédric Vanhoeck, co-founder & CEO at Resortecs

Decathlon joins H&M and Bershka (Inditex Group) in our client roster and becomes the 3rd major global brand to launch products with Smart Stitch™ and Smart Disassembly™ in less than a year.

Skiers who don’t want to compromise on sustainability when hitting the slopes can find the disruptive jacket at Decathlon stores in Spain and online at www.decathlon.com for all other European markets. 

Resortecs – REcycling, SORting, TEChnologieS – is an award-winning start-up that develops design-for-disassembly solutions. We drive full circularity in fashion with heat-dissolvable stitching threads and thermal disassembly systems that make recycling easy.

For further inquiries:

Davidson Leite
Communications & Branding Lead
[email protected]

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – Brussels-based start-up Resortecs is partnering with Bershka, a global  fashion brand part of the Inditex Group, to launch a new capsule collection using the start-up’s design-for-disassembly technology to facilitate recycling and upcycling.  

The collaboration brings together summer and circularity in two unisex products – denim shorts and jeans – made with Resortecs’ Smart Stitch™ for easy disassembly. The products will be available online and at selected stores in 60 markets across the world as of 5 August.

Resortecs aims to boost textile recycling with two patented innovations: Smart Stitch™, heat-dissolvable stitching threads, and Smart Disassembly™, an industrial oven capable of taking apart the different components of clothing made with Smart Stitch™. This way, the start-up expects to reduce the high costs and complexity of separating different textile materials ahead of recycling.

For Bershka, this collaboration is part of Inditex’s Sustainability Innovation Hub: an open-innovation platform that works alongside start-ups, academic institutions, and tech centers to promote and scale disruptive solutions for new materials, technologies and processes that reduce the environmental footprint of fashion products and help advance towards circularity.

Founded in 2017 by Cédric Vanhoeck and Vanessa Counaert, Resortecs has already validated its solution with over 30 international fashion players:

We are thrilled to work with Bershka. Since day one, we’ve been positively
surprised by how much their team is committed to the circular transition.
The final products look great and have infinite possibilities for their next
lifecycle. – Cédric Vanhoeck, co-founder & Executive Lead

Resortecs – REcycling, SORting, TEChnologieS – is an award-winning start-up that develops design-for-disassembly solutions. We drive full circularity in fashion with heat-dissolvable stitching threads and thermal disassembly systems that make recycling easy.

For further inquiries:

Davidson Leite
Communications & Branding Lead
[email protected] | +32 0494 94 93 54

Davos, a tiny village in the Swiss Alps, becomes the planet’s financial epicenter every year when it hosts the prestigious World Economic Forum (WEF). During that week, the village gets invaded by black, chromed-up luxury sedans – with black tinted windows and chauffeurs in dark suits wearing even darker-tinted sunglasses – driving from one chalet-looking hotel to another. 

Next to the supply chain challenges linked to the pandemic and the Russian invasion, this year Resortecs was also on the agenda of the world’s biggest economic event. I was invited to join the summit’s climate change discussions as a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader and Resortecs’ Executive Lead – a company proudly considered “tête de course” in sustainability and circularity.

My role was to showcase one of the technologies that can help big polluters (like the fashion industry!) meet the Paris Agreement targets and comply with new environmental policy frameworks, like the much-discussed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

Resortecs was not the only innovator invited. I was lucky to carpool with changemakers like Lubomila Jordanova from Plan A, a company allowing for easy carbon and ESG reporting for businesses, and Tobias Engelmeier from Village Data Analytics, a company advocating for the better use of data to help bring electricity in remote places. Tobi’s VW beach van took us up and down the Alps, stacked with good ideas, and turned out to be the first of the many insightful exchange moments we were about to experience.

Davos serves networking on steroids. The conference hall in the center is for those who want to see and be seen. The important discussions and meetings are held inside hotel lobbies, meeting rooms, suites, and corridors – where wine and champagne are served with canapés from 10:00 in the morning.

Each hotel entrance becomes an airport security check with metal detectors and – unlike the ones in the Vatican – very serious Swiss guards. The free CBD chewing gums offered in the lobby of many hotels help the ones too stressed out to calm down.

We joined panel discussions and keynotes, pitched our solutions, and now know what sustainable whiskey tastes like.

But most importantly, I learned the following:

1. Prof. Johan Rockström: “we need science-based targets”.

That’s why we’ve invested in Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), a scientific method to assess and calculate the environmental impact of products and processes, since the start of Resortecs. Take a look at our LCA to understand how Resortecs’ Smart Stitch™️ and Smart Disassembly™️ allow existing recycling processes to reach an even higher impact potential – including 50% less CO2 eq. emissions. 

2. Dr. Laura-Marie Töpfer: “we need to focus on hardware, it is what created the problem and is also what is going to help us out of it because carbon dioxide is a molecule and digital solutions don’t allow us to capture it.”

We didn’t invest our most valuable resources in the construction of our Smart Disassembly™️ system because we like big machines! If we really want to achieve environmental and commercial targets, we need hardware that can generate a positive impact as efficiently as other hardware polluted for years. 

3. Barbara Ann Bernard: “carbon credits and value can be used wisely to fund the transition.”

Fashion brands running industrial pilots or launching their first collections with Resortecs have learned very quickly that linear production models are not only risky, they also limit economic growth. The circular economy, on the other hand, makes it possible to monetize a product, its materials, and its components multiple times while reducing their environmental footprint.

A big thank you to the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt for inviting Resortecs to the WEF this year!

I look forward to joining next year’s edition with a more resilient fashion economy that has a clear climate positive strategy in action.

The fashion-tech startup that facilitates industrial-scale textile recycling is one of the 74 high-potential businesses chosen in the most competitive selection of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – Brussels-based startup Resortecs has been selected to receive a grant worth €2.5M from the EIC Accelerator. The startup enables industrial-scale recycling in fashion thanks to high-quality, automated garment disassembly. 

Currently, less than 1% of all clothing produced is recycled, largely due to the high costs and complexity in separating different textile materials prior to recycling. Resortecs solves this issue with two patented innovations: Smart Stitch™, heat-dissolvable stitching threads, and Smart Disassembly™, an industrial oven capable of separating the different components of clothing made with Smart Stitch™, all without compromising the quality or creativity of clothing.

Aligned with the EU efforts to accelerate circular fashion and progressively halt fast-fashion production, Resortecs is one of the 74 startups selected out of over 1000 applicants in what is the most competitive funding round from the EIC Accelerator. The high-potential companies will each receive grants and/or equity investments, depending on their needs.

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth said:

The new wave of innovation is currently led by deep tech start-ups that target societal challenges. I am happy to see so many of them applying to the EIC, in particular from countries that are catching up in their levels of research and innovation performance. Thanks to the European Innovation Council, they will get the support they need to accelerate their growth and lead on the next wave of deep tech.

Founded in 2017 by Cédric Vanhoeck and Vanessa Counaert, in 2021 Resortecs had already raised over €1.8M to fund R&D and start piloting their disassembly solution, now validated by over 30 global fashion giants. Winners of several awards – from the H&M Foundation Global Change Award in 2018 to the 2022 Female Founder Challenge organized by VivaTech and Société Générale just last week – the startup counts on renowned supporters, including La Maison des Startups LVMH in France, Desigual’s Awesome Lab in Spain, and the BMW Foundation’s RESPOND Accelerator in Germany. 

We are thrilled to have been selected by the EIC. This sum is a stepping stone to close our current €5M fundraising round – the most ambitious so far. We want to double the team, produce new continuous disassembly systems and scale our thread production to answer the ramping demand for circular solutions coming from the EU textile industry. – Cédric Vanhoeck, co-founder & Executive Lead.

Resortecs’ Smart Stitch™ has already been used in collections such as “Genesis” in collaboration with the American made-to-measure jeans brand Unspun and with H&M for the “Circular Design Story” capsule collection. A new partnership with Spanish giant Inditex is set to hit the stores this summer. By the end of the year, the French Decathlon will launch its first model with Resortecs’ thread: a fully circular ski jacket.

Resortecs is the laureate of Viva Technology & 50inTech’s #FemaleFounderChallenge of 2022! Vanessa Counaert, our co-founder and Strategic Lead, was crowned female founder of the year for Resortecs’ innovation, scaling potential, and solution impact.

The #FemaleFounderChallenge is an initiative that puts female entrepreneurs at the front and aims to accelerate the financing of women-led startups and to urge Venture Capital (VC) funds to commit to more gender equality at all levels. Resortecs was one of the 5 finalists of the challenge, selected out of over 500 applicants from 69 countries.

As the new winner, Vanessa and Resortecs get access to a substantial platform of visibility from Viva Technology – VivaTech is the biggest European event for technology and startups.  Additionally, the laureate also gets private meetings with the #FemaleFounderChallenge’s high-level VC jury, a speaking opportunity with Maddyness, mentoring sessions on fundraising with Claire Calmejane from Société Générale, and last but not least, a startup booth at VivaTech 2023.

It was very inspiring for Resortecs to be surrounded by so many female entrepreneurs, with a special shout out to the other 4 finalists: Charlotte Gaudin from AML Factory, Shusma Shankar from Deep Planet, Lilia Leye Shwartsman from MICA AI MEDICAL, and Bola Bardet from Susu.