H&M Commits to Multi-Year Purchase Deal with Recover for Recycled Cotton

H&M adds a new supplier of recycled products. It is the Spanish company Recover, with which the Swedish fashion retail group has signed an agreement to integrate recycled cotton in its products. As company sources have informed Modaes, H&M garments made from this type of cotton will be available in stores from next year.

The mechanical cotton recycling company has been working with H&M since early last year to develop the products, which will be introduced on a large scale next year. The company specifies that this is not a one-off collaboration, with a limited number of garments, but a “multi-year” agreement. However, neither company discloses how many garments will be manufactured with this material.

In a joint statement, H&M insists on its goal of using only recycled or sustainably sourced materials for its collections by 2030. For its part, Recover argues that large-scale access to recycled fibers is “fundamental to the transformation of the industry.“

H&M and Recover have been developing products since last year, although they do not specify how many garments will be made from the recycled material

With this agreement, H&M is once again interested in garments with recycled fiber. In fact, it is one of the companies with the most ambitious sustainable goals in the market. In mid-October, it did so with the U.S. next gen Circ. H&M then introduced recycled fibers for the first time in two of its garments, which will soon also see the light of day.

The retail group also recently announced that it has taken a stake in another sustainable company: the German start-up Reverse Fashion. The company will use its funds to develop its technology through Artificial Intelligence and image recognition, with the aim of automating the sorting of used textiles.

According to the latest data published, H&M, the world’s second largest fashion retail group, closed the first nine months of the year with an acceleration of the decline in sales, which has dragged throughout the year, and a net result down. The company did, however, manage to multiply its profits.

In the first months of the year, H&M posted sales of 169.1 billion Swedish kronor ($18 billion), 1.8% less than in the same period of the previous year, and above the decline recorded at the halfway point of the year. H&M’s profit for the period fell further to SEK 7,753 million ($827 million), down 9.8%.