Petshka

🏆 Call for Research and Development Partnerships 2025 partner

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Company presentation

PETSHKA is a start-up based in Baillargues (34 – Hérault, France), specializing in chemical recycling of polyester. Its patented process enables the depolymerisation of polyester textile waste to produce a recycled polyester polyol. As part of the project, PETSHKA is developing a tailor-made polyester polyol, optimizing the depolymerisation step, and leading the scale-up to an industrially reproducible process.

Several partners with complementary expertise are collaborating on this project:

  • La Manufacture 49 (ERAM Group) defines the specifications for the polyester polyol, provides expertise on polyurethane (PU) sole typologies, and validates polyol performance through injection trials.
  • WASTEX (Coleo Group) designs a viable pre-sorting system to remove footwear not targeted by the project, adapts its optical sorting tools to identify polyurethane (PU) soles, and ensures industrial reproducibility.

Project objectives

The Sole-to-polyol project led by PETSHKA aims to recycle polyurethane (PU) soles (from post-consumer, non-reusable shoes) into polyester polyol using PETSHKA’s chemical recycling technology, supported by the development of material sorting for footwear by WASTEX. The incorporation of the recycled polyol will be tested through injection trials performed by the ERAM Group.

  • Refashion funding : 158 425€
  • Project duration: 14 months

💡 Key project informations

  • Type of CHF covered : Footwear with polyurethane (PU) soles
  • Recycling stage : Sorting for recycling and material preprocessing + chemical recycling + incorporation of recycled content
  • Recycling process : Depolymerisation
  • Applications : Footwear (closed loop) – exploration of additional open-loop applications: furniture, textile padding, flexible coatings, etc.
  • Output product : Recycled polyol

🔄Project steps

1. Optimisation of sorting and shredding/grinding

of post-consumer shoe-derived polyurethane (PU)

2. Depolymerisation

of polyurethane (PU), plus formulation and characterisation of the recycled polyol

3. Scale-up

of the recycling process and injection trials of the recycled polyol

Words of the Project manager

“With PETSHKA, we are convinced that textile waste is an underexploited resource. Our ambition is to prove that polyester waste can once again become a quality raw material, serving high-performance and durable products. This project is unique due to the strength of the collective it brings together. Together, we are building a complete chemical recycling chain.”

Fanny Cottret - Project manager at PETSHKA

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