Our Story
The clean-tech impact start-up Healix was founded by Marcel Alberts in Maastricht, The Netherlands in January 2021. Marcel started his career at DSM in 2000 and worked in marketing & sales of world’s strongest fiber Dyneema® before he left DSM to set-up EuroFibers in 2011. EuroFibers evolved to a leading supplier of technical fibers catering the European rope and net makers and was acquired by Active Capital, an Amsterdam based private equity firm in 2019 and renamed to FibrXL with the ambition to expand outside Europe. Marcel stayed as Managing Director of FibrXL but during Corona decided that he wanted to start a new company to help solve the plastic problem created by ghost gear and discarded ropes and nets in fishing and farming.
The factory was built and commissioned in 2021 in the first quarter of 2022. It was opened on 12 March 2022 by Frans Timmermans, former Vice President op the European Commission.
Healix’ line is considered to be a First Of A Kind (FOAK) recycling line with a name plate capacity of 6.000 tons. The line is capable to recycle ropes and nets that previously couldn’t be recycled and were typically diverted to landfill or incineration. Directly after the opening it became apparent that there was a lot of interest in Healix’s products and since, Healix developed strong partnerships for both closed loop recycling and open loop.