The management of the SOEX Group, one of the leading companies in the field of textile recycling and circular economy in Germany, has applied to the responsible district court in Reinbek to open insolvency proceedings under self-administration.
The court followed this request and appointed lawyer Dr. Matthias Wolgast from Münzel & Böhm Partnershipsgesellschaft mbB as provisional administrator. As experienced restructuring practitioners, Oliver Dankert and Harald Ick from the renowned law firm GÖRG are expanding the management team as Chief Insolvency Officers (CIO). Business operations will continue without restrictions, wages and salaries are guaranteed up to and including November 2024.
“The workforce is informed that we want to push the future concept of SOEX with a new investor,” explains Dankert. “We are currently setting up an orderly M&A purchase process.”
SOEX Managing Director Fred Ponath adds: “With our future concept, we are well prepared for upcoming legal developments, such as the planned extended manufacturer responsibility in the EU or the introduction of separate textile collections from 2025. They offer SOEX an opportunity for further growth in the area of sustainable textile recycling.”
The application was necessary because traditional markets in Eastern Europe have collapsed, while competitors from Asia are simultaneously putting the markets under pressure with their overcapacity. This has led to extraordinary short-term losses in earnings and liquidity. In the past financial years, the group of companies with almost 460 employees in Germany and a subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) generated annual sales of around 60 million euros. SOEX Processing Middle East FZE is not affected by the self-administration procedure. No bankruptcy petition has been filed for them.
The preliminary self-administration proceedings include SOEX Textil-Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH (Ahrensburg, around 130 employees), SOEX Processing Germany GmbH (Bitterfeld-Wolfen, around 300 employees), SOEX Recycling Germany GmbH (Bitterfeld-Wolfen, nine employees) and I :Collect GmbH (Ahrensburg, 17 employees). For each of these companies, Dr. Wolgast appointed as provisional administrator.
For over 40 years, the SOEX Group has been collecting, sorting and recycling old clothes and shoes in order to return them to the material cycle. SOEX aims to minimize textile waste and conserve resources by either processing old textiles for reuse or recycling their materials. The company’s philosophy is aimed at creating a true circular economy in which textiles and shoes are recycled as completely as possible instead of ending up in landfills or being incinerated. With these services, the SOEX Group actively contributes to reducing textile waste and promoting sustainable recycling methods.
For one of the leading companies in the field of used textiles and shoes, new legal developments, such as the planned extended producer responsibility in the EU and the introduction of separate textile collections from 2025, offer great opportunities: These measures could increase the collection volume of used textiles and help the company through its advanced sorting – and recycling technologies enable it to further expand its market position.
Source: tsc.komm / SOEX
