Melbourne-based circular economy company UPPAREL is scaling up its fight against fashion waste, unveiling what it claims is the country's largest onshore textile recycling facility. 

Located in Cranbourne West, Victoria, the new 10,500sqm facility is built to tackle the materials that have long plagued the recycling industry: the mixed-fibre garments, zippers, and buttons that typically send textiles straight to landfill.

At the heart of the new operation is a 30-meter-long, custom-built system that UPPAREL says is Australia's first completely automated textile recycling line. The company claims its cutting-edge machinery can safely transform a single item of clothing into reusable fibre in just three minutes.

Crucially, the system features an Australian-first metal and hardware remover. This component automatically eliminates contaminants like zippers, buttons, and other hardware—a key bottleneck that makes many garments impossible for traditional recycling systems to process.

The machinery, developed in-house by UPPAREL, is also built for flexibility. It can reportedly process textiles with polyester content ranging from under 10% to over 70% without any adjustment. This versatility allows the facility to achieve a 90% garment and textile recovery rate, giving even the toughest fabric blends a second life.

The end-product of this process is a material called "Uptex". UPPAREL transforms unwanted textiles, from end-of-life clothes to uniforms, into this versatile recycled material. It is then sold as a sustainable alternative for use in goods like construction materials, signage, packaging, and other "everyday essentials".

Michael Elias, Co-Founder and CEO of UPPAREL, framed the launch as a milestone for onshore advanced manufacturing.

"We are honoured to be Australia's leading onshore mechanical textile recycling company with the capacity to manage all stages of textile of the recovery to sustainable manufacturing underpinned by the most advanced management system monitoring every step of the way," Elias said. "Our team has created an engineering marvel of textile transformation, and we couldn't be prouder of this achievement."

The new facility boasts the highest capacity for textile recycling on a single site in Australia, capable of processing over 10,000 tonnes of materials annually. UPPAREL is also touting a "world-first" "farm to fibre to future" technology, which it says delivers complete traceability and transparency for the entire remanufacturing process.

This launch marks a significant step up from the company's "at-home concept" origins. To date, UPPAREL states it has already diverted and recycled more than 50 million items from landfill. In a nod to its educational mission, the new facility also includes acrylic viewing windows, allowing students and visitors to watch the automated recycling process in action.