Renasens Closes €10 Million Seed to Bring Textile Recycling to European Scale

Renasens, a deep tech company revolutionising textile recycling through a proprietary, waterless supercritical CO2 platform, led by Jade Abir Bouledjouidja, Nora Eslander, and the team, has raised a €10 million seed round led by Extantia, with participation from Course Corrected VC and continued backing from Norrsken Launcher.

The funding, reportedly the largest hardware seed round in Europe this year, will be allocated toward implementing a pilot plant in Borås, Sweden, and initiating the direct reintegration of recovered fibers into European manufacturing.

Over 12 million tons of textile waste are generated annually in Europe, yet less than 1% is recycled into new fiber. Existing technologies handle clean, single-fiber waste but fail on the blended and treated materials that dominate post-consumer textiles. Renasens aims to close this gap by enabling a domestic fiber recycling loop and reducing reliance on imported virgin materials.

Renasens uses modified supercritical CO₂, a state in which carbon dioxide behaves as both a liquid and a gas, to decolour and separate blended textiles, recovering intact fibers without depolymerisation, toxic chemicals, or water. The fibers are reintroduced directly into existing spinning and manufacturing systems, requiring no reformulation or new equipment.

Designed as a modular platform, deployment can occur within existing European facilities rather than centralized factories, well-suited to a fragmented supply chain. Recovered cotton and polyester fibers are already being supplied to manufacturers in Portugal and Italy.

Amid tightening regulations in the European Union, new rules on textile collection and producer responsibility are rapidly increasing demand for recycling solutions. Scalable technology has remained limited, an infrastructure gap Renasens aims to fill.

Renasens was founded by Dr. Jade Bouledjouidja, whose research into supercritical fluids revealed a path to solving blended textile recycling. Following validation at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, early funding was secured from Norrsken Launcher in November 2024.

Within a year, a team of chemists and engineers was assembled, a €10M seed round was closed, and a pilot facility in Borås was initiated. The company was also named a winner of the Global Change Award 2025 by the H&M Foundation.

“Post-consumer textile waste has long been considered unsolvable, both technically and structurally. The material science has now been addressed, with pilot-scale operations underway and infrastructure and partnerships being developed to enable economically viable, industrial-scale recycled fiber production in Europe for the first time.” — Dr. Jade Bouledjouidja, Founder & CEO, Renasens

“Renasens represents strategic infrastructure in Europe. As regulation tightens, brands and manufacturers requiring compliant, high-quality, locally sourced fiber have lacked viable options, an absence this platform addresses, while delivering at a green discount,” says Carlota Ochoa Neven Du Mont, Partner at Extantia. “Execution has also been exceptional, with progress achieved in 12 months that typically takes five years.”