When FiberFlow received the EXIST Gründungsstipendium in October 2024, the technology existed only as an idea. One year later, the lab phase is complete. Every process step has been built and proven to work. The prototypes are done.
That is not a small thing. Moving from a concept to a functioning separation process, one that can take post-consumer textile waste and produce clean, single-fiber fractions, required solving a long chain of technical problems, one after the other. The Founders of FiberFlow spent the past year doing exactly that, working out of HTWK Leipzig with the focus the scholarship made possible.
What Was Proven
FiberFlow's process separates blended post-consumer and post-industrial textile waste into single-fiber fractions: polyester, cellulose, polyamide, polypropylene, acrylic, and elastane. Each step in that process has now been validated in the lab. Purity levels reach up to 99%, verified by FTIR spectroscopy.
The question that drove the lab phase "does the process actually work?" has been answered.
What Comes Next
Proving a process in the lab and producing material at a volume useful to a recycling customer are two different problems. That is the challenge FiberFlow is now turning to: scaling up production to a point where samples can be delivered to recycling companies running chemical, thermo-mechanical, or biological processes.
The path from lab prototype to sample-ready output requires a different kind of work than the year that just ended — more engineering, more capital, and the right partners. That is what the next phase is about.
Recycling companies interested in working with FiberFlow on sample material are more than welcome to get in touch through our Pioneer Program!
