Pontetorto – the historical textile group from Tuscany celebrating its 70^th anniversary this year and a leading business in the sportswear and fashion world – finds Fulgar – a leading company in the production of man-made, innovative and increasingly sustainable yarns – as the ideal partner for a new project aiming at supporting the circular economy in the textile industry.

Presented for the first time at Performance Days, the new collection of fabrics for activewear and fashion by Pontetorto has been entirely made with the revolutionary Q-CYCLE® yarn.

An eco-sustainable yarn obtained from end-of-life tyres, considered to be among the most difficult elements to be disposed of and also a highly polluting factor at a global level. Suffice it to say that every year in Europe only, 1.37 million tonnes of tyres (40% of total production) are not yet recycled but mostly incinerated with high CO2 emissions.

“Our commitment towards a sustainable textile industry – underlines Marco Toccafondi, Head of Pontetorto Sports line – constantly pushes us  to both looking for high level partners within the supply chain and finding cutting-edge solutions capable of either accelerating this process and really making the difference for us as a textile manufacturer and for our customers. This is what made of Fulgar an interesting partner company while recognizing Q-CYCLE® as an example of a virtuous story which we hope will be best welcomed by the market”.

Q-CYCLE® yarn is the result of an innovative chemical recycling technology, the pyrolysis, which is part of BASF’s ChemCycling™ recycling project and Fulgar’s spinning technology. “Pyrolysis” can be applied to any plastic waste that cannot be recycled mechanically such as end-of-life tyres and also allows the material to be returned to its virgin state. This technology is two-fold virtuous by being self-sufficient: the waste portion which cannot be transformed into raw material is pyrolysed into gas and used to generate the energy required for the entire recycling process. The recycled content is allocated to the final product by using a third-party controlled mass balance approach.

Q-CYCLE® is an innovative polyamide with as many functional and aesthetic benefits as the virgin polyamide (lightness, strength and resistance) yet featured by a “green” added valued. A perfect yarn for producing high quality and eco-sustainable fabrics.