Resortecs x Sioen: The start of a European consortium for workwear textile waste management

Resortecs, a leader in textile eco-design and end-of-life waste management, partners  with Sioen, a global leader in technical textiles and protective clothing, to create workwear that combines durability with circularity. This collaboration is a major milestone in developing workwear that meets the highest safety standards while being designed for disassembly and recycling at the end of its lifecycle.

Under the agreement, Sioen will be integrating Resortecs’ Smart Stitch™ heat-dissolvable threads into its workwear production. This enables the creation of eco-designed garments that can be efficiently disassembled and recycled without compromising quality, comfort, nor protective functionality. Resortecs, on the other hand, will offer  its comprehensive textile waste management service, that includes the disassembly and sorting of the discarded and returned textile products, as well as  facilitating the recycling of the sorted textile materials. 

Bart Vervaecke, CEO of Sioen’s Protective Clothing division, commented:
“Sioen together with Resortecs makes a big step in ready-to-dismantle garments with this cooperation. We are proud that with our support we can enable Resortecs to install their EU-based disassembly line. Resortecs’ technology will play an important role as a fully integrated part of our sustainable strategy at Sioen, drastically improving the end of life solution for our garments.”

The beginning of a textile waste management circularity consortium in Europe

This collaboration lays the foundations of a Resortecs-led consortium in the Benelux and France regions for end-of-life textile waste management of workwear. The consortium will unite the efforts of workwear manufacturers, recyclers, government agencies, and Resortecs, to facilitate an operationally optimised and financially viable circular textile waste-management solution for complex apparel. 

At the heart of the consortium is a Smart Disassembly™ line, with an annual processing capacity of 3000 tons, that will be placed and operated in Belgium by Resortecs by the end of 2025. The Smart Disassembly™ pre-processing line will integrate with existing sorting and collection infrastructure, as well as current and upcoming recycling technologies. 

Resortecs’s holistic waste management solution uses an innovative technology to solve a critical challenge in textile recycling. By automatically eliminating trims that block recycling and reclaiming double the amount of a product’s textile content, up to 15x faster, Resortecs facilitates circularity on an industrial scale. As a result, high-performance workwear, along with other textile products like mattress covers and fashion garments, can now be disassembled and recycled more effectively.

Workwear manufacturers operating in Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and/or France can now take part in the consortium by simply producing their textile products with the heat-dissolvable Smart Stitch™ sewing threads. Once those textile products have reached their end-of-life, they are delivered to Resortecs for disassembly, sorting, and recycling. Get in touch to learn more.

A new circular standard for protective textiles

This collaboration marks a crucial step towards setting circularity as the new standard in the protective clothing and technical textiles sectors, with the goal of producing over half a million of fully recyclable garments with Sioen in the coming 3 years.

Cédric Vanhoeck, CEO and co-founder of Resortecs, commented:
“As we drive circularity in protective textiles, we’re challenging industry norms. Many believe that circular design can’t align with safety standards, but we’re proving otherwise.This collaboration shows how innovation is key in the sector for building a more sustainable future without technical compromises.” 

By combining Sioen’s expertise in protective gear with Resortecs’ cutting-edge Design-for-Disassembly technology, the partnership is setting a precedent for workwear that protects both workers and the environment.

“It’s galvanising to see one of the biggest workwear players in Europe supporting our efforts in creating a pan-European network of disassembly and pre-processing infrastructure. We are actively looking for other market leaders in other European regions such as DACH, Iberian Peninsula, and Scandinavia with whom we share the same vision in rejuvenating the European textile industry”, added Cédric Vanhoeck.




About Resortecs
Resortecs® offers pre- and post-consumer textile waste management services for the fashion, workwear, bedding and automotive industry. The company offers heat-dissolvable stitching threads (Smart Stitch™) and thermal disassembly systems (Smart Disassembly™) that enable easy, automated textile recycling on an industrial scale. Resortecs’ mission is to lead the textile industry towards full circularity by facilitating Design-for-Disassembly (DFD).

About Sioen
Sioen is a global leader in technical textiles, colouring solutions and protective clothing, providing high-performance solutions for a wide range of industries, including workwear, firefighting, military, and forestry. Dedicated to innovation, Sioen combines advanced materials and cutting-edge designs to ensure maximum safety and durability, all while striving to promote sustainability through the development of circular products.
More information about Sioen can be found online at: https://sioen.com/en

Resortecs has joined forces with Decathlon, the global leader in sports equipment and apparel, to develop a fully recyclable swimwear collection without compromising performance, functionality, or aesthetics. This collaboration blends state-of-the-art technology with high-performance design.

Acerina Trejo Machin, the Chief Technology Officer at Resortecs, explains, “We all know that a high percentage of elastane prohibits the recycling of fabrics, but eliminating elastane lowers the functionality and performance of a garment. To balance performance and recyclability, Decathlon developed Negombo, a fabric ensuring elasticity without the use of elastane.”

However, creating a swimwear garment with a recyclable fabric alone isn’t enough to meet the required performance and comfort, for which elastic bands are needed. Those elastic bands are not processable by recyclers and block the recycling of the swimwear. This is where Resortecs comes into play. Resortecs’ Smart Stitch™, combined with Smart Disassembly™, enables the efficient separation of the elastic bands from the main fabric at the end of the garment’s life cycle.

Acerina elaborates, “Resortecs’ active disassembly process ensures the maximum recyclability rate of the swimwear garment. Our technology allows for fully automatic disassembly, without any manual intervention, at a scale of up to 10 tons a day. This results in an impressive 63% increase in material recovery and is 10 times faster than conventional methods.”

The synergy between Resortecs and Decathlon allows for the creation of swimwear that is not only high-performing but also fully recyclable, without making any compromises in design, durability, or comfort. 

Closing the loop has never been easier. By incorporating Resortecs’ disassembly solution, product designers can ensure circularity while focusing on their ultimate goal: creating garments that best fit their customer needs.

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.