Andritz textile recycling line. Image: Andritz


Reverse.fashion’s Line.sort technology detects damage,


wear, and quality in real time. Image: Reverse.fashion


DataBeyond is a China-based optical sorting technology group that branched out from the plastics sorting market in 2025 to also target the circular textiles sector. Daniel Lai, Overseas Sales Manager at the group, said that the automated sorting market in textiles is still at an early stage. But DataBeyond has the expertise and cost-effective technology to be a “game changer”, he told TextilesLoop at the company’s Textiles Recycling Expo stand, where it promoted its capabilities to potential European customers.


Faster sorting tech Its Fastsort products are comparable to NIR technology developed by Euro- pean competitors, said Lai. Sorting lines can be configured in multiple ways to adapt to the different needs of textile customers. The Fastsort Waste Textile Optical


Sorter integrates depacking, material spreading, and sorting into one system. Equipped with a 256-band hyperspectral sensor and an AI-pow- ered vision system, its capabilities include: material identification, to precisely distinguish the composition percentages of pure cotton, polyester, nylon, spandex, wool, etc; colour and style recognition (structural features, such as collar and sleeve types); and automatic contaminant rejection, to separate damaged, soiled garments, as well as those containing leather or coatings. DataBeyond has also developed its technology for optical sortation of shredded textile scraps. Fastsort


14 Textiles Loop • Autumn 2026


Textile-Flake Sorters can be used in tandem for forward sorting and reverse sorting, which removes unwanted objects, such as buttons, zippers, metals and plastics. Lai said that DataBeyond was the first company to combine AI with optical sortation, starting in 2018. It now has 3,000 installations in various market sectors including plastics and municipal solid waste. In April, the group opened a flagship project for sorting mixed plastics in Taichung, Taiwan. With daily capacity of 100 tonnes, the centre is operated with the AI Agent Factory Management System which eliminates the need for 20 sorting workers per shift. Andritz is an established technol-


ogy group in multiple industries including the nonwoven textiles sector. Marketing Manager Daniel Storms said it is targeting the growing number of recycling companies in textile-to-textile


and also textile-to-nonwoven. Some bigger recycling companies are in the market for whole lines, he said, while “some are starting more or less at zero, so they are searching for budget- friendly equipment”.


Picking hard elements Portuguese woollen textile company A Penteadora recently started up a complete textile production waste recycling line and a needlepunch nonwoven line supplied by Andritz at its production site in Unhais da Serra. The installation includes advanced picker technology which enables the removal of hard elements such as buttons and zippers, bringing added value in terms of material quality and process efficiency, said Andritz. The mechanical textile recycling line comprises cutting, blending, fibre opening, and carding designed to process complex materials, including


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