While Turkiye’s major yarns and textile fabrics industry achieved exports to the value of $12.6 billion in 2023, this was down on the $12.9 billion achieved in 2022, according to the Istanbul Textile and Raw Materials Exporters’ Association (ITHIB).

What these basic figures conceal beyond general global market instability, however, is the devastating impact of the tragic earthquakes that took place in the south of Turkiye on February 6^th last year, which are reported to have killed more than 50,000 people and displaced more than 3 million.

Dealing with the immediate impact of such a major tragedy took precedence over any business considerations for many months in what is a major hub for the country’s textiles and apparel industry, and this makes its largely undiminished performance in 2023 somewhat remarkable.

Interdependence

Europe meanwhile remains the biggest export market for Turkish textiles, while European machine builders, including Oerlikon, Rieter, Santis, Saurer, Starlinger and Trutzschler have equipped much of the country’s industry over the past 50 years. So, there is a high degree of interdependency and collaboration between the two.

At the start of 2025, the European Union will impose a ban on the landfilling or incineration of waste clothing, which is being viewed as major opportunity for new business. As a result of the EU’s highly ambitious Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, fibres will need to stay in circulation much longer than they have to date, and the recycling and regeneration of this considerable new raw material stream will certainly rely heavily on the know-how and experience of Turkiye’s spinning industry.

Gama Recycle

A number of Turkish companies are already very successfully recycling both cotton and synthetic fibres, including Gaziantep-headquartered Gama Recycle, which was one of the companies reported to have had plants impacted by the 2023 earthquakes.

Gama now has more than 1,500 employees at six production sites in Turkiye, recycling an average of 300 tons of PET bottles and 200 tons of used clothing and fabric waste into yarn, textile products and PET chips on a daily basis.

Company founder Zafer Kaplan was early to see the major opportunity represented by textile recycling in Turkiye, and has commented that when the company was founded in 1997, producing regenerated fibres and yarns was not a high priority.

“Most countries and companies were not particularly sensitive about environmental issues and a lot of the cutting waste from the garment or textile industry was simply thrown away as trash or sent to be incinerated,” he said. “It was not valuable for them to actually take care of these leftover materials. There was a huge amount of plastic and textiles waiting to be reused, but one of the most complicated aspects was actually collecting all the waste. Today, however, most garment manufacturers have started to sort and sell their leftover cutting materials, which is a big improvement.”

Staple Fibres

Gama has installed a full staple fibre plant from Oerlikon Neumag, and Kaplan noted that a lot of technology providers are now focusing on recycling machines, which is helping to encourage the general growth of the recycling industry.

“When we started, most of the time we had to convert or modify our machines to make them suitable for recycling processes,” he said. “Sourcing remains the most crucial and complicated part of our work and we purchase our waste raw materials from all over the world. Unfortunately, sometimes what is sold on the market does not match up to expected specifications.

“Recycled fibres have huge market potential and end-users are looking for environmentally friendly products, but they would not compromise on the quality of the products they buy, which is why we chose the Neumag fibre line with which we are able to control the whole process in a very efficient way, with a consistently high quality of fibres as well as less production waste.

“Our aim is to work up to a total of 300 tons of PET flake capacity per day on the Neumag line, which will allow us, to make 200 tons of recycled polyester fibres and 100 tons of PET chips. With its impressive technology and capability, the line will enable us to achieve our goals more easily.”

Autocoro

To process its mechanically recycled fibres into yarns, Gama relies on Saurer Autocoro spinning units, with about 3,000 positions in use and 80 per cent of recycled fibres turned into rotor yarns in mixes with virgin fibres.

Recycled fibres are not as strong as virgin fibres and can be eroded during their first life, and also during the opening process of the bales of recycled fabric. As a result, quality can be very variable, but over the years, Gama has developed specific know-how and protected it with many patents. In 2022, the company invested in the latest generation Autocoro 10 rotor spinning machines to benefit from 20 per cent energy savings compared to the previous model.

RCO100 Technology

Since 2019, Santis Textiles has been producing around 300-350 tons of 100 per cent recycled cotton monthly using specially developed RCO100 technology at the plant of its partner Kipas in Kahramanmaras, Turkiye, a company which was also affected by the 2023 earthquakes.

Santis RCO100 technology has been under development since 2016 and was commercially launched for third party manufacturers by a second Kahramanmaras-based company, textile machinery builder Temsan, at ITMA 2023 in Milan.

“Since 2010 we have worked on recycling, initially with polyester and from 2016 with cotton,” explained Stefan Hutter, owner of Santis Textiles, which is headquartered in Singapore and now has a branch office in Switzerland. “The challenge of developing the technology for 100 per cent cotton recycled yarns and fabrics took us initially to China where we did trials with different machine modules and moved them around until we obtained some first encouraging results. It took us about two years until we were able to produce denim fabrics and some chinos and knits out of 100 per cent recycled cotton.”

Kipas

Santis then moved the project to Kipas where the first full RCO100 recycling system was installed.

Kipas Holding is a conglomerate of 25 companies with more than 10,000 employees and annual sales of more than $100 million. Its textile operations have an annual capacity of 400,000 tons of yarn and 100 million metres of woven fabrics, with an emphasis on denim.

“Kipas is fully vertical, with spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing under one roof and is also a major denim producer,” Hutter observed. “Kipas then introduced us to Temsan which is in the same region, and this made development of the project very fast. If something was needed or had to be changed on the machine, the guys from Kipas would go over to Temsan immediately to look at issues, fix them, and learn. It seems incredible that 15 months after receiving the first technical drawing, they had produced a commercial machine. The Temsan team worked day and night to have the machine ready for ITMA 2023.”

“Sustainability has become a critical factor in the textile industry,” added Cem Erdogrul, managing director at Temsan. “There is a growing need for recycling, both pre- and post-consumer, to reduce waste and promote a circular economy. While this project may be an initial step, it shows that we recognise the importance of embracing recycling technologies to create high quality, sustainable textiles.”

Fibre Length

The RCO100 recycling system has been developed to carry out the most gentle fibre treatment in order to achieve maximum fibre length.

A standard line includes two conveyors and two guillotine knives positioned at 90-degree angles to achieve the best possible cutting results.

An initial buffer unit also acts as a mixing chamber for the cut material and controls the feeding to the four pin or saw-toothed pre-opener cylinders.

Feeding of the cylinders is through feed rollers but without clamping points or counter-rotating cylinders. Transport is by perforated drums which not only de-dust the fibre sliver, but also forward it without stressing the material.

From the pre-openers, the material is sent to three parallel fine-opener lines, each equipped with 12 opening cylinder modules. It can be run through the system as many times as necessary until the fibres are fully opened before being pressed into standard bales.

Compact Spinning

In addition, working with Swinsol, a Swiss machine components specialist, Santis has developed a compact ring spinning system specifically designed for yarns to be produced from the RCO100 recycled fibres.

“From day one our aim was on retaining fibre length – the only way to achieve good results in spinning and weaving,” Hutter said. “Turkish cotton has a staple length of approximately 31-32 mm and when we recycle this, we achieve an 80 per cent staple length of approximately 25-26 mm. The output length depends on the input length of course, but we can say we have approximately 15-20 per cent loss. We can also retain longer fibres by reducing the production rate.”

The RCO100 technology can spin open end yarns in counts from Ne 5.9-20 and carded ring compact yarns from Ne 8-30. In addition, carded ring compact yarns can be produced up to Ne20 with 40 den and 70 den recycled elastane.

“All of the other players on the recycling market come from the nonwovens sector because it is all about tons per hour, but a lot less about fibre quality,” Hutter said.

Brand Support

Santis has ongoing partnerships with fashion brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein Jeans and Lacoste, and is also partnering with FibreTrace to develop a unique traceable ID specifically for RCO100 fibres, yarns and fabrics.

FibreTrace technology gives brands 20/20 vision of their supply chains at every step – from sourcing of raw fibre to store – combining physical and digital technology to provide unparalleled intelligence. It is indestructible through the entire textile supply chain, auditable and traceable in real-time, verifies brand claims, builds trust, and engages the consumer.

Since 2020, Hutter has worked with his daughter Annabelle, who is now Santis managing director.

“The textile world is changing – there is legislation coming, first in the EU, and this will give the recycling sector a big push,” she said. “We now have further ideas in development for combining our recycling system with spinning technology and also on approaching the recycling of poly-cotton blend fibres.”

Com4 From Orsa

In recent years, Istanbul-headquartered denim leader Orta has pioneered the production of ring yarns made of blends of recycled and virgin cotton and is now the first company to hold a Com4recycling-ring license from Switzerland’s Rieter.

The two companies have worked closely together on optimising the processing of recycled fibres, resulting in improved yarn characteristics and expanding the potential applications in weaving and knitting mills.

The Com4recycling-compact spinning process enables customers to produce fine compact yarns with almost 40 per cent recycled fibres and high yarn quality from demanding raw material bales. The comber removes very short fibres and neps from blends of recycled and virgin cotton, making it possible to increase the recycled content in the blend. At the same time, both unevenness and imperfections in the yarn are improved with the use of the Rieter comber, and the COMPACTdrum compacting device significantly improves the running behaviour of the ring spinning machine, as well as hairiness and tenacity in the yarn.

To help spinners work with recycled fibres, Rieter has established a recycling classification system for the typical raw-material quality available on the market. This makes it easier for spinners to estimate what targets can be reached depending on the material. The short-fibre content, mean fibre length and 5 per cent fibre length are important parameters after the tearing process because they determine which subsequent spinning process (either ring or rotor) should be used and which quality and maximum spinning fineness, depending on the yarn count, can be achieved.

Truecycled

Since also announcing its Truecycled system in cooperation with Turkiye’s Balkan Textile Machinery at ITMA 2023, Germany’s Trutzschler reports that it has received many enquiries from companies looking to enter the recycling field.

The German machine builder is now expanding its portfolio to include full Truecycled solutions covering the whole process – from the fibre preparation of torn textile waste through to the carding and drawing of secondary fibres. Aydın, Turkiye-based manufacturer Balkan is meanwhile supplying the cutting, tearing and bale pressing equipment.

Challenges

As already mentioned, recycling systems face significant technological challenges since on average, torn fibres are much shorter than virgin fibres and their percentage share in the fibre mass is much higher.

Unopened yarns and fabric particles are also difficult to process and not surprisingly, much academic and practical research is currently being conducted to find solutions for these problems.

Dr. Georg Stegschuster, a researcher specialising in textile recycling, believes a systems approach is needed. He is working at the Recycling Atelier, a model factory for mechanical recycling at ITA Augsburg in Germany.

“A perfect fine-tuning between tearing and spinning preparation is the key to obtaining the best possible quality results and avoiding unnecessary fibre shortening,” he explained. “This can be achieved if you are in control of both processes – and have the necessary expertise.”

In some cases, for example, it may be advantageous to have less aggressive settings in the tearing line. This can help avoid unnecessary fibre shortening. The remaining higher share of unopened fabric must then be handled in a high-performance spinning preparation line. This starts with the right blow room configuration for perfect opening, cleaning and blending. A card that is specially designed for recycling materials, such as the new Trutzschler TC 30Ri, can also enable gentle but effective treatment of fibres.

Drafting

A shortened drafting process is also a must. The integrated IDF 3 draw frame can make this possible since the draft is high enough to provide excellent levelling of the short fibres, but low enough to prevent floating fibres.

“There is a lot of technological potential for improving the quality of the end-product through the right configurations and settings,” Stegschuster said. “There are a growing number of examples that show how higher quality end-products can be achieved from recycled materials, and how the share of pre- or post-consumer waste in yarns can be increased without compromising on quality.”

Each Truecycled recycling installation can be configured and fine-tuned by Trutzschler experts based on specific customer requirements.

TA Reborn

As the largest polyester producer in Greater Europe with an annual capacity of some 200,000 tons and 2,200 employees, Bursa-headquartered Korteks is estimated to meet 55 per cent of all Turkiye’s needs.

In addition, since 2021 the company has been producing recycled filament yarns following the €10 million investment in a new polymer facility, including a recoSTAR universal 165 H-VAC iV line supplied by Austria’s Starlinger.

With an annual production capacity of 7,200 tons, the line currently processes clean in-house polyester fibres from production scrap together with washed post-consumer PET flakes in a 50/50 blend.

Korteks uses the polyester regranulate at a share of 100 per cent for its polyester filament yarn line it is marketing under the TA Reborn brand name.

“We have been in extensive cooperation with Starlinger for a long time,” said Korteks general manager Barış Mert. “Due to its unique and innovative recycling technology we can offer new products in line with the circular economy model.”

Rapid Sleeve Changer

The Starlinger recycling line is the first of its kind in Turkiye and is equipped with special components for filament yarn recycling. An RSC (rapid sleeve changer) candle filter ensures the finest melt filtration down to 15 μm. It has been specially designed for polyester recycling and reaches an output of 1,000 kg per hour. For continuous operation, the filter elements can be changed “on the fly” without interrupting production, which significantly limits melt loss.

The viscoSTAR SSP unit at the end of the recycling process guarantees consistent IV increase according to the “first-in-first-out” principle. This ensures that the produced regranulate has the ideal properties required for filament yarn production. The technical configuration of the line not only allows the processing of a polyester fibre/PET flake mix as input materials, but also 100 per cent polyester filament scrap or 100 per cent PET bottle flakes.

With the new recycling facility, which comprises a total closed area of 17,000 square metres and has a monthly production capacity of 600 tons, Korteks has been able to reduce the production waste at its virgin PES yarn site to zero.

“Turkiye is a significant global player in this industry and if more and more Turkish textile manufacturers start using recycled materials, this will be an important signal for the sector and a big step towards a circular economy,” said Paul Niedl, commercial head of Starlinger recycling technology.

For more than 30 years Starlinger recycling technology has been providing machinery solutions for the recycling and refining of a wide range of plastics such as PE, PP, PA, PS, BOPP and PET. Starlinger PET recycling systems produce food-safe rPET and are approved for use in food applications by many brand owners as well as various national and international authorities.

PTA Self-Reliance

Turkiye is, however, also poised to become self-reliant in the raw materials for polyester production when the new $1.5 billion SASA Polyester plant for purified terephthalic acid (PTA) comes on stream later this year in Adana.

Adana was also one of the cities in the southern region of Turkiye badly affected by the February 2023 earthquakes and there were fears that the SASA PTA project, first announced in 2018, would be delayed as a result.

These fears, however, have been allayed by İbrahim Erdemoglu, chairman of Erdemoglu Holding, SASA’s owner.

“We did not postpone any plans, and we currently have nine thousand people working day and night to ensure the plant is completed on time,” he said in February this year, announcing the commencement of commissioning of an HP steam boiler and fuel gas system at the site.

The PTA plant will have an annual capacity of 1,750,000 tons and instantly position Turkiye as a net exporter of polyester, rather than a net importer. The company has pointed out that this is how both South Korea and China strengthened, stabilised, and significantly grew their textile industries.

In addition, SASA Polyester plans to have a second $400 million PET polyester fibre plant operational before the end of this year at its Adana complex, adding a further annual capacity of 402,500 tons.

Valuable Expertise

The success of the European Union’s Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles is unthinkable without the significant involvement of Turkiye’s textile industry, which is directly on Europe’s doorstep, as well as serving as the gateway to Asia.

It has the expertise and retained know-how in the production of both cotton and synthetic fibres, as well as extensive filament and fibre spinning that largely disappeared from the rest of Europe decades ago.

The EU’s idea that the infrastructure for the regeneration of its textile waste – around 7-8 million tons a year and promising to become a 35 million ton mountain by 2030 – will all take place within the bloc is optimistic at best and even if it rapidly emerges, this new raw material stream will quickly overwhelm local manufacturers.

As the EU’s nearest near-shore partner, Turkiye is ideally positioned to lead the field in the conversion of fibre-to-fibre recycled materials into new products.

In fact, this is already happening, and it is no surprise that so many European machine builders are partnering with Turkiye’s fibre and fabric manufacturers for the next big opportunity.