UPPAREL Named a Finalist in the AFR Sustainability Leaders 2026 Awards – Manufacturing & Consumer Goods

It was always about proving this could be built here.

The Australian Financial Review has named UPPAREL a finalist in its Sustainability Leaders 2026 Awards, in the Manufacturing and Consumer Goods category. It’s the same category we won just twelve months ago. So when the AFR and BDO recognise us again, it means a lot to us, and we don’t take it for granted.

A year ago, we won this category after diverting 2.7 million kilograms of textiles from Australian landfill. Today, that figure sits at 17.1 million kilograms. Along the way, we’ve also prevented an estimated 60 million kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions. This growth has been extraordinary. In fact, it shows exactly what happens when community, corporate and government momentum for genuine circularity meets onshore infrastructure that can actually deliver it.

But what excites us most isn’t where we’ve been. It’s where we’re going.

Right now, we’re finalising a new piece of textile recycling technology, one that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere. This technology will deliver a tenfold increase in our processing capacity. As a result, it will put Australia on the global leaderboard for textile recycling and recovery. For us, this is the clearest proof yet that sovereign capability in textile waste management isn’t a future ambition. We’re building it right now, under UPPAREL’s roof, in Australia.

Because of that, we can’t wait to show the industry, our partners, and the next generation of circular economy thinkers what the next 12 months hold.

So to our partners, customers and team: thank you for making this recognition possible. The best is genuinely still to come.

Click below to read the full AFR feature:

Leading a Textile Recycling Revolution — AFR