Ai4fibres

Currently recyclers use manual sorting methods which includes reading the labels inside the garment (mostly cut out or incorrect) or use handheld machines to scan the garments individually. Making them labour intensive & expensive. A couple of new large scale sorting machines are available in Europe but they have limitations on how many compositions of materials they can scan at one time and the speed to process each garment. Nor do they detect or cut materials like zippers, buttons  etc. and they are very expensive to purchase, hence not feasible for all UK based councils / recycling plants / SME’s.

We have been working with Kingston University since mid 2022, to develop, design and build an automated textiles recycling machine Ai4FIBRES to identify & sort garments as per their compositions. 

For example - A pair of jeans will be processed through our system, which will read the composition (60% cotton fibres, 20% polyester, and 20% elastane) & blue colour. The scanner will pick up the position of the rivets, zippers & button and send the information to the cutting arms. Once the zipper etc are cut through with minimum wastage, the jeans will be sent to the allocated bay.

Post our process, the recycler or manufacturer will receive 00’s of kgs of blue jeans without any zippers /buttons.  Hence making remanufacturing easier, quicker and more accurate rather than current manual processing.

To know more pls get in touch at ask@kapdaa.com