India has a wide but unorganised value chain for post-consumer domestic (PCD) waste. Formalised sorting hubs or Textile Recovery Facilities (TRFs) primarily dealing with PCD waste, are at a nascent stage, trying to find their feet within the market by optimising processes at both the demand and supply sides. These TRFs are sorting PCD waste through manual methods. However, despite the waste valorisation potential of these sorting hubs, their returns are limited in certain cases as they are unable to provide good quality waste feedstock and assurance of the material composition to high-grade fibre-to-fibre mechanical recyclers. This gap provides a potential area for the deployment of sorting technologies. 

About 48% of the Post-consumer Domestic Waste (PCD) has the potential to be valorised via formalised sorting hubs. Out of this, 35% of the waste can have better utilisation by adopting semiautomated & automated technologies, leading to a revenue increase of 10%. At an industry level, this translates to 1,380 kilo tonnes of waste and INR 388 Cr (going up to INR 1,348 crores in some cases) of additional revenue in one year. However, an enabling environment needs to be created to make these technologies economically viable for a sorting hub.

The business case presented in this report assesses commercial viability for both semi-automated and automated technologies and validates the hypothesis under five different scenarios. Thus, it demonstrates the infrastructure and investment requirements to valorise the post-consumer textile waste, serving as a framework to enable well-informed decision-making for sorting hubs to implement sorting technologies.