rPET for Textile Fibers & Filaments
Most recycled PET becomes fiber, and spinning is the least forgiving thing you can do with it. Why Nexam sells a separate linear grade here, and why textile demand is a weaker driver than packaging.
Polyester fiber is the largest single use of PET, larger than bottles, and most recycled PET in the world ends up as fiber rather than as new packaging. Spinning is also the least forgiving thing you can do with a recycled polyester melt, because a filament is thin, continuous and drawn at speed: a defect that a bottle wall would tolerate breaks a filament and stops the line.
Why spinning is the hard case
Three things make fiber different from packaging.
- Continuity. A tray is formed in a second and the process resets. A spinning line runs the same melt through hundreds of holes for hours, so variability in the feed shows up as broken filaments rather than as a bad part.
- Thinness. The melt is drawn to a fraction of a millimetre. Melt strength and its consistency along the filament decide whether it survives the draw.
- Uniformity of molecular weight. Blends of feedstock with different histories spin unevenly even when the average looks right.
This is why fiber producers have historically been strict about the recycled material they accept, and why recycled content in fiber is dominated by bottle flake, which is the cleanest and most uniform stream available.
What Nexam Chemical offers here
The company's second PET grade is aimed exactly at this: NEXAMITE M992000, which it describes as a linear IV enhancer for continuous filaments, fibers and PET strapping, working through linear chain extension. The distinction from its sheet grade matters. Branching raises melt strength, which helps a sheet hold itself up, but branching in a spinning melt is a defect: it broadens the molecular weight distribution and makes drawing uneven. A linear extender rebuilds length without building structure.
Its Reactive Recycling site lists fiber and filament spinning as an application, claiming higher recycled content without losing tenacity, and strapping as a separate one. No test data, customer or trial is published for either.
The existence of a separate linear grade is the most technically informative thing the company publishes about its PET chemistry. It implies branching in the sheet grade, which it does not state anywhere.
Where the regulation does and does not reach
The packaging regulation does not cover textiles. Its recycled content minimums apply to packaging, so PET strapping, which is packaging, falls under the 35% requirement for non-contact-sensitive plastic packaging from 2030, while yarn for clothing does not.
Textiles have their own European framework, moving separately and more slowly, which means fiber demand for recycled PET is driven today by brand commitments rather than by statute. That is a weaker and more reversible driver than the packaging mandate, and worth separating when reading company statements that treat all recycled PET demand as one market.
Sources
- Nexam Chemical, IV enhancer for PET and rPET, for the grades and their stated use.
- Reactive Recycling applications, operated by Nexam Chemical.
- Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 7, for what counts as packaging.
Independent research, not affiliated with Nexam Chemical and not investment advice.