COMPANY NAME Junkle
COUNTRY Italy
SECTOR Textiles
CIRCULAR BUSINESS MODEL Product Life Extension, Recovery and Recycling
CHALLENGE
The fashion industry is under increasing pressure to reduce waste and adopt more circular production models. At the same time, high-quality technical materials from the sail and nautical sector often reach end of life without structured collection and recovery systems, despite their durability and potential value for new applications.
For Junkle, the challenge was to strengthen its circularity performance by creating a system able to collect and manage these materials in a structured way, and to integrate them into a fashion-oriented circular production model.
SOLUTION
Junkle developed SailForward, a digital platform designed to support the collection, management and traceability of sail and nautical materials, making their recovery more structured and scalable.
With the support of the Horizon Europe Up2Circ programme through a lump sum investment, Junkle was able to bring this circular process into production, improving its circularity performance and establishing an operational flow for the recovery of materials that can be revalorised in the fashion sector.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY STRATEGIES/BUSINESS MODEL IMPLEMENTED
The project combines several circular economy strategies:
- Recovery of post-use technical materials from the sail and nautical sector.
- Upcycling and material revalorisation by redirecting these materials into new fashion applications.
- Digital traceability to improve the management and visibility of material flows.
- Integration of circular sourcing into production, reducing dependence on virgin materials.
- Platform-based coordination, enabling a more efficient and scalable recovery model.
IMPACT
SailForward allowed Junkle to transform circularity from an intention into an operational business practice.
- It improved the company’s circularity performance through a more structured recovery of secondary raw materials.
- It enabled the creation of a production-ready collection and management system for sail and nautical materials.
- It strengthened the link between waste recovery and fashion production, showing how technical end-of-life materials can be turned into valuable resources.
- It provides a replicable example for fashion SMEs seeking to integrate unconventional waste streams into circular business models.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Circular fashion can be strengthened by connecting digital traceability, material recovery and production. Junkle’s SailForward shows how technical materials from other sectors can become valuable circular inputs for fashion through a structured and scalable system.