eBay’s Circular Fashion Fund winner Dempstah is turning textile waste into knitwear

An Australian design practice that is recycling textile waste and turning it into yarn that can then be reused in knitwear has won the top prize from eBay’s 2024 Circular Fashion Fund.

On Wednesday, eBay Australia, with support from the Australian Fashion Council, revealed that Dempstah, which was founded by Guy Dempster and Otis Ng, won the leading prize fund of $100,000.

The runners-up were RCYCL, founded by Belinda Paul, and The Very Good Bra, founded by Stephanie Devine, which have each been awarded $50,000 to support their circular business solutions.

In addition to the funding, the three recipients will participate in a three-month program of mentoring, networking and workshops to learn how to market and scale their business.

The Fund, a global initiative that began in the UK in 2022, was established to help scale and develop the circular fashion economy by supporting innovation and aligning with the fashion industry’s goals to achieve circularity by 2030.

From northwest Tassie to the world

Dempstah works to recycle Australian textile waste into spun yarn in collaboration with both international and local textile mills.

Co-founder Guy Dempster has spent the past decade studying and working in fashion and textiles for designers in New York and Sydney, and manufacturers across southern China and Hong Kong.

He knew the current approach to textile production and consumption needed to change, and so he decided to do something about it. 

The design practice’s mission is focused on waste traceability and establishing fibre recovery facilities locally in Australia, including establishing a mill in northwest Tasmania. 

Dempstah is currently producing spun yarn that is suitable for knitwear production, as well as recovered fibre, which can be used as an alternative to traditional synthetic fibre fill-in garments, homewares and furniture. 

Dempster confirmed to SmartCompany that the prize money will go towards establishing a micro mill in northwest Tasmania, which will allow Dempstah to house and operate fibre recovery machinery and develop greater insight into this milling process. 

“What we’re really keen on is procuring some of the basic milling machinery enabled to do the fibre recovery process on shore,” he explains. 

“We’ve got land in northwest Tasmania and we’ve already had a successful development application approved last year to expand the existing shed on the property into sort of a home agri-scale facility in which to house this machinery towards the end of this year.

“Basically the funds would go towards trying to establish just this micro mill in Tasmania. To give us the most basic means of production to turn textile waste back into all fibre and learn about the process.

“One of the things that has become really apparent over the last few years working with these international manufacturers that we work with is just how little textile milling or fibre processing is done in Australia.”

Dempster says the team also wants to do a world tour of sorts to visit the suppliers that he has connected with.

“(To) get a better sense of the type of machinery that we can afford and what sort of subsequent fundraising we’d have to do depending on the true costs,” he adds.  

Then, the focus will be on fitting out the space in Tasmania, getting the right machinery on site, and learning through practice. Dempster is also interested in “seeing whether there are any applications for the raw fibre that we can recover that may also be non-textile related”.

Dempstah has also recently collaborated with the Salvos and the City of Sydney to take post-consumer waste from their stores and transform 500kgs (half a metric tonne) into 5ply cotton and wool blend yarn.

Circular solutions only part of the answer

Dempster says the team are grateful to eBay and the Australian Fashion Council and thankful for the opportunity to find more mentors with experience in small-medium scale industrial domestic manufacturing.

“The one thing that I always want to be clear about and careful with is that I know that there isn’t a great sentiment amongst the public right now towards a lot of recycling solutions,” Dempster adds when wrapping up the interview with SmartCompany. 

“We’ve all been burned by things like REDcycle and I think there’s a lot of cynicism around it. I always just want to present that I don’t partake in this.

“I’m not saying it’s the silver bullet, panacea solution to completely resolve the textile waste crisis. It is a necessary part of circularity, but the most important thing is a massive reduction in our consumption and there’s no quick fix or stopgap for that.

“We would only want to be recycling high quality, natural fibre garments. That’s what our process works best with and it’s a far cry from the incredible amounts of synthetic blend stuff that just is ubiquitous in the modern wardrobe. 

“So that’s really the first thing: reduce consumption and then circular solutions.”