Following last month’s €10.3 million funding round, Epoch Biodesign, a British enzymatic recycling startup, today announced that it will establish Europe’s first and the world’s largest nylon 6,6 biorecycling demonstration plant at Grapht Works, Imperial College London.
The announcement marks a milestone in Epoch’s scale-up journey, taking its patented enzymatic recycling process from laboratory operations to a facility capable of processing hundreds of tonnes of post-consumer nylon 6,6 waste a year.
Jacob Nathan, founder and CEO of Epoch Biodesign, says: “One of the most important advantages of our biological process is what it does not do. It does not require high temperatures. It does not demand the heavy industrial infrastructure that has historically meant manufacturing must be sited far from where people live and work.
“The Grapht Works facility sits inside a broader urban neighbourhood in London. The fact that we can build and operate a nylon 6,6 recycling plant in Greater London is not incidental; it is a feature of the clean, low-energy process our team has developed. This is what genuinely circular, industrial biochemistry looks like.”
Several examples in the same or adjacent circular-materials space help contextualise Epoch Biodesign’s news and launch of their London facility. These include:
- WeSort.AI in Würzburg raised €10 million to scale AI-based recovery of critical raw materials from waste streams
- Uplift360 in Bristol raised €7.4 million to expand composite-waste recovery and reuse
- Octarine Bio in Copenhagen added €5 million to industrialise its sustainable pigment platform
- Sparxell in Cambridge raised €4.2 million to scale plant-based colour technology for fashion and textiles
- WtEnergy in Barcelona secured €10 million to expand energy recovery from industrial waste and biomass
- Seprify in Fribourg raised €13.4 million to move cellulose-based industrial ingredients towards industrial supply.
Together, those adjacent 2026 rounds amount to about €50 million; including Epoch Biodesign’s own €10.3 million financing, the visible 2026 total reaches about €60.3 million.
The UK stands out in this group, with both Uplift360 and Sparxell from the same country as Epoch. EU-Startups had also previously covered Epoch Biodesign’s €17 million Series A in March 2025, which means the company’s latest announcement sits within a broader 2025/2026 funding picture of about €77.3 million across the same or adjacent segment.
There is also continuity on the investor side:2025’s Epoch round named Extantia Capital as lead investor, and EU-Startups later covered Extantia again in Uplift360’s February 2026 round, suggesting continued investor interest in circular manufacturing and materials infrastructure.
Luciano Caruso, Chief Commercial Officer at Epoch Biodesign, adds: “The Grapht Works plant has the capacity to process hundreds of tonnes of post-consumer nylon 6,6 waste a year: this is sourced from apparel and automotive products, as well as various industrial applications. New EU regulations require these industries to confront what they do with end-of- life nylon, and incineration or landfill are no longer acceptable answers.”
Founded in 2019, Epoch Biodesign is a BioTech company and global leader in enzymatic recycling. Epoch’s ultra-low emission process produces virgin-quality recycled materials from mixed waste streams. By combining AI and advanced synthetic biology, Epoch designs enzymes to efficiently recycle end-of-life plastic and textile waste at a commercial scale.
Epoch’s process uses AI-engineered enzymes to deconstruct end-of-life nylon 6,6, including technically challenging feedstocks such as silicon-coated airbag fabric, elastane-blended textiles and post-consumer clothing back to their constituent chemical building blocks.
These ‘monomers’ are of virgin quality and can re-enter the nylon 6,6 supply chain without performance compromise. Unlike conventional chemical recycling, Epoch’s biological process is highly selective and reduces carbon emissions.
Nylon 6,6 (also known as nylon 66 or polyamide 66) is a high-performance, synthetic thermoplastic polymer commonly used in both the plastics and textile industries due to its strength, durability, and versatility.
“The new plant validates our biological process both technically and commercially, demonstrating to industry partners and policymakers that a truly circular, clean, and economically viable route to nylon recycling exists today. This is the start of a sustainable, resilient supply chain of a critical material, without the pricing volatility associated with petrochemical-derived products,” adds Luciano.
The demonstration plant will also position Epoch Biodesign to support brands and manufacturers seeking compliant end-of-life solutions for nylon products ahead of new EU regulations under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which, from July 2026, will ban the destruction of unsold garments.
With less than one percent of textiles currently recycled back into new textiles, the company believes the industry requires scalable, clean recycling infrastructure capable of processing diverse nylon waste streams at meaningful volumes.
This demonstration plant, which opens in the third quarter of 2026, will build directly on Epoch’s growing commercial momentum.
In February 2026, Epoch Biodesign and INVISTA, a leader in nylon 6,6 production and the company whose heritage is directly linked to the invention of the material, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to advance the development of post-consumer recycled nylon 6,6 at commercial scale.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/04/fresh-from-e10-3-million-raise-epoch-biodesign-unveils-london-nylon-66-biorecycling-facility/
