Circulose — the Swedish recycler that rose from the ashes of Renewcell — says its efforts to shore up the recycled viscose supply chain are starting to show promise. It comes at a critical time for next-gen materials, in which investor confidence has been wavering after a series of collapses hit headlines.
On Tuesday, Circulose announced multi-year partnerships with eight new brands, including Bestseller, John Lewis, C&A, Filippa K, Reformation, US clothing brand Faherty, childrenswear label Bobo Choses and German womenswear retailer Zero. Circulose says these deals bring it significantly closer to reopening its manufacturing facility, which has been sitting dormant for the past two years.
Renewcell announced its bankruptcy in February 2024, after it was unable to secure sufficient funding or brand buy-in to continue operating its commercial-scale factory, which opened in 2022. Early brand partnerships had stalled at the pilot stage, and the price premium proved too high to motivate the kind of widespread adoption needed to fill the facility (the company produces pulp for viscose using recycled textiles instead of conventional virgin wood pulp). Experts called it a wake-up call for an industry that often chases novel innovations, but doesn’t follow through with meaningful implementation. That’s why, when the company secured a new owner — and a new name — in June 2024, its focus shifted from pilots to industry-wide penetration.
In November 2024, Circulose drafted in a leadership team to steer its relaunch, helmed by former H&M Group CEO Helena Helmersson as chairperson and former McKinsey partner Jonatan Janmark as CEO. A handful of brand partnerships soon followed: by November 2025, the company had inked a multi-year deal with H&M, one of its original investors, as well as fast fashion giant Mango and high street retailer Marks Spencer.
Janmark says the latest string of partnerships is an “important milestone in Circulose’s new chapter”. He adds: “After a year of resetting our strategy and intensely engaging with brands, this wave of commitments show our efforts are paying off.”
Still, the future remains uncertain. Sustainability has undergone a dramatic vibe shift this year, with Trump’s anti-ESG backlash in the US leading the way for watered-down regulations in the European Union. Meanwhile, brands are squeezing costs more than ever as supply chain volatility throws their profit margins into chaos. Next-gen material producers have been caught in the crossfires: in recent months, Mycoworks, Bolt Threads and Natural Fiber Welding have all wound down or shuttered their production of next-gen leather alternatives.
Against this backdrop, Janmark charts the road ahead for Circulose.
Vogue: Congratulations on the new brand partnerships. What exactly have these brands committed to?
Each brand has committed to scaling recycled materials and replacing a meaningful share of their man-made cellulosic fibers with Circulose over the coming years. Specific numbers vary by brand. Smaller brands have obviously made smaller commitments, while larger brands have made larger commitments. As of January 2026, we will shift the business model, so that Circulose is no longer available on the open market. That means only brands we have direct partnerships with will be able to buy Circulose [some of the brands, including Reformation, were already using Circulose, but the new deal allows them to continue and scale].
Vogue: Why did you decide to shift the business model in this way? How will it help incentivize brands to adopt Circulose on a larger scale?
It’s been a gradual reshaping of the strategy. We realized early that we had to focus on the brands and redefine our partnerships with them, to make sure we were getting to their mainstream collection and not just a nice capsule collection [which often happened when brands could buy small quantities on the open market]. We needed to help them operationalize the new material and remove the friction from scaling. So we now have a service offering for brands, and we have decoupled the price premium from the product itself.
Vogue: How exactly have you decoupled the price premium?
First, we reduced the overall price premium — partially because of how we price the pulp, but a much bigger portion comes from how we work actively with different players at different steps of the value chain, not least our direct customer, which is the viscose producers. We now have strategic agreements with them, so we can align our pricing strategies. Part of that is us securing volume in exchange for them committing to a lower price.
The second step is that brands are now paying an annual fee, based on roughly how much volume they will buy, which shifts the investment position at a brand level from the individual buyer over to the central finance or sustainability team. So brands now pay an annual license fee that covers their license to use the Circulose trademark, as well as the support we provide in terms of conversion, communication and marketing, traceability, and tailored material libraries. That means the brands are internally subsidizing the cost of the material on behalf of their buyers, which helps buyers to hit their margins and KPIs at the product level.
Vogue: So you’re much more involved in the whole value chain now?
Exactly, it’s more of a solutions approach. Renewcell sold pulp, which put them five steps upstream from the brand, and they positioned it as a niche, specialty product. Circulose is selling pulp, of course, but we are also orchestrating and facilitating for brands, to make sure the pulp makes it to the finished garment in an efficient way, both in terms of pricing and quality. We want to make it more of a commodity product, so we’re taking end-to-end ownership of serving our brand partners across the value chain. We believe that the green transition will not work if everyone puts extra-high margins on green products.
Vogue: It’s quite a novel approach for a next-gen material producer to look at the whole value chain in that way. Was there any pushback from other stakeholders?
Yes, there have been challenges. First of all, it takes time for people to wrap their heads around what we’re doing and why. There have been some skeptics, but most people turn into supporters when they see the momentum from brands. We’re trying to keep it complex for a few and simple for the many.
Vogue: Your brand partners span from premium to mass market and fast fashion. How do you choose the right partners to scale with and design the right partnerships to derisk the process for everyone involved?
We’re focused on large, mass market brands because that’s where the volume is and where we can make the biggest difference. But we’re open to working with any brands that are serious about scaling recycled materials. We have spoken to 50 to 60 brands over the past year, and more will be added as partners in the coming months.
We have a big advantage over Renewcell, which is that the factory has already been built and it’s ready to deliver, so we don’t need to offtake agreements to convince banks to fund a new factory. What we do need is to prove demand, which is where the license fee comes in. Brands are committing to pay that premium. If they don’t buy products that reflect their fee, they’ve wasted their money, so it’s a strong incentive for them to buy. We want to secure enough demand to reopen the factory in the latter half of 2026. The trick will be timing this right, so we are not starting too early and trying to sell new pulp while there’s existing inventory. [At the time of its relaunch, Circulose said it had enough pulp to fulfill 18 to 24 months worth of orders.]
Vogue: It’s great to see momentum behind Circulose, but beyond that, industry confidence in next-gen material solutions seems to be waning. What do you make of the closures of Mycoworks, Bolt Threads and Natural Fiber Welding?
It’s not trivial. But all of the cases there are different to ours. They are not as much of a drop-in replacement. They were not exact replacements for leather, they were new materials with huge potential, which are harder to scale. The viscose produced with Circulose is truly the same as the viscose produced with dissolving wood pulp. The second big difference is cost parity — we’re getting much closer now, so we can see strong momentum.
Vogue: Where do you think that momentum is coming from on the macro level?
We are definitely feeling the greenhushing backlash from Trump, and even before, but there’s nuance. Maybe regulation is not moving as fast as we hoped, but we are getting closer to firm regulation than we were five years ago. Instead of hype and marketing, it’s about focus and scaling. ESPR [Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation] and EPR [extended producer responsibility] are moving forward and will support the scale-up of circular industries. The Chinese government is also quite focused on textile-to-textile recycling. And a lot of brands that have set their preferred materials roadmaps are really serious about those commitments. It’s a chicken-or-the-egg situation: what comes first? The commitment or the solution?
Vogue: What comes next?
The next step is to secure enough momentum to restart the factory, then we scale capacity. It’s not easy to start up a factory that has been hibernating for two years, so that will require more and more focus on our side. Right now, current capacity is 60,000 tons per year, which would more or less get us to break even. If we can double it to 120,000 tons, we would be profitable, which means we could eventually build a second factory and continue to grow the business. That kind of capacity expansion comes with investment, but there are multiple forces driving in that direction.
