Advisory Board profile: Valvan
- Apr 2
- 2 min read
Valvan is a Belgian engineering company specialising in advanced sorting and baling systems for the textile and recycling industries. With more than four decades of experience in designing intelligent industrial solutions, Valvan has built a strong reputation for delivering reliable, high-performance systems that help companies handle complex textile waste streams efficiently and safely.
At the core of Valvan’s approach is a commitment to innovation, durability and customer-focused engineering. Each project is developed through close collaboration with clients, ensuring that solutions are tailored to specific operational needs. From design and manufacturing to installation, commissioning and training, Valvan works closely with partners to create systems that are both technically robust and operationally sustainable. Through the integration of advanced visualisation technologies and remote support systems, the company also ensures that customers worldwide can operate and maintain their equipment effectively.
Valvan joined the BioSusTex Advisory Board because of the strong alignment between the project’s goals and the company’s mission to bring industrial-scale textile sorting solutions to the market. With over 40 years of experience in textile sorting technologies, including successful deployments of systems such as Fibersort and Trimclean, Valvan contributes valuable industry-driven insight into how innovative recycling solutions can be implemented in real operational environments. From Valvan’s perspective, one of the most significant opportunities BioSusTex could unlock in the coming years is the creation of a credible European blueprint for large-scale textile feedstock preparation. As the textile recycling ecosystem evolves, one of the major challenges remains the gap between recycling technologies and the quality of incoming textile waste streams. Addressing this mismatch is essential to enable both chemical and mechanical recycling processes to scale effectively.
To maximise real-world impact, Valvan believes BioSusTex should prioritise the development and demonstration of industrial-scale pilots, showing how textile waste can be reliably sorted and pre-processed into high-quality feedstock suitable for recycling. Establishing clear standards and quality definitions for sorted textile fractions (such as fibre composition, colour separation and material purity) will also be crucial. These standards can help create greater transparency and confidence across the value chain, supporting investments in new recycling infrastructure.
Looking ahead, Valvan sees success for BioSusTex as the demonstration of a validated end-to-end pilot process capable of upgrading mixed textile waste into consistent, recycler-grade feedstock. Equally important would be the development of widely accepted quality standards for sorted textile streams and improved alignment between waste collectors, sorting operators, and recycling facilities. By strengthening this connection between supply and demand, BioSusTex could significantly accelerate the growth of Europe’s circular textile economy.
Through its participation in the Advisory Board, Valvan brings a practical, industry-oriented perspective to the consortium, helping ensure that the project’s innovations remain grounded in the realities of large-scale textile processing and recycling.