To protect the world's natural resources was the motivation of Zafer Kaplan. When he came up with the idea of recycling the leftovers from clothing production, he was one of the first to process recycled fibres for fashion. Processing the short, mechanically recycled fibres is a big challenge because the length and quality of the fibres are not consistent. Gama does not stand still and is constantly looking for new ways and processes that can save more energy or raw materials in order to produce even more sustainably.

Gama, which was an early trendsetter in the sustainability field, now has 6 production sites in Turkey. Every day, more than 1,500 employees recycle around 300 tonnes of PET bottles and 200 tonnes of used clothing and fabric waste into yarn, textile products and PET chips. As consumer demand for 'green fashion' increases worldwide, Gama Recycle continues to grow, exporting around 40% of its production to more than 30 countries and its yarns are used by many international brands for sustainable fashion.

Zafer Kaplan's vision was to grow and "protect nature by moving forward with an environmentally friendly approach, increasing the amount of textile and plastic bottle waste processed in production and returning it to the economy". Recycling saves not only energy and virgin natural fibres, but also water, fabric dyes and mineral oil when processing manmade fibres.

Gama was looking for machines and technologies that could handle high short fibre content, high fibre fly and have a low energy consumption. Recycled fibres are not as strong as virgin fibrs and have been stressed during their first life and during the opening process of the fabric. The quality of recycled fibres is changing constantly. One secret of Gama's market success is to spin a consistent yarn quality from that highly variable raw material.

The Saurer Autocoro rotor spinning machine is ideal for processing short recycled fibres and Gama Recycle now has around 3,000 Autocoro spinning positions in use. At Gama, about 80% of the regenerated fibres are processed as rotor yarns. Saurer supports its customers in defining the correct machine settings and elements such as rotors, opening rollers and nozzles. This support facilitated Gama's entry into the production of recycled OE yarns.  

Over the years, Gama Recycle has developed specific know-how and technologies for the processing of recycled and regenerated fibres and has protected its know-how with more than 23 patents. In 2022, Gama invested in the latest generation of Saurer rotor spinning machines – the Autocoro 10 – to benefit from 20% energy savings compared to the previous model.