On the Molí de la Potassa industrial estate in Sabadell, just outside Barcelona, there is a warehouse of more than 30,000 square metres. In December 2023 it changed hands. The buyer was not a fashion brand or a logistics company, but a foundation created by Càritas to help people find work.
Why would a social enterprise buy what it describes as the largest textile treatment plant in southern Europe run by the social economy?
The answer starts with what Formació i Treball does every day. Founded in 1992 by Càritas Diocesana de Barcelona, the foundation offers people who have been pushed out of the labour market a real job, a contract and time to learn, usually for one to one and a half years and up to three. It is a member of TESS GEIE, a European grouping of social economy enterprises working with used textiles, whose members collect around 71,000 tonnes a year. Clothing is the foundation's main trade. It manages hundreds of collection containers across Catalonia and, at the time of the purchase, gathered around a third of the textiles collected separately in the region.
By 2023 that work was spread across three sites, in Sant Esteve Sesrovires, Constantí and Sant Adrià de Besòs. Change was coming. Spanish law, following EU rules, made the separate collection of textiles compulsory from 1 January 2025. More clothes would enter the system, and many of them would be lower in quality than before. Sorting them well, and preparing what cannot be worn again for recycling, would take scale, new machinery and new processes.
So the foundation decided to bring everything under one roof. The Sabadell plant was designed to handle up to 20,000 tonnes of clothing a year and to create 250 jobs for people on an integration pathway. Almost three years later, the plant is working, though not yet at full speed. In October 2026 the foundation reported that it was running at about 60% of its capacity. Textiles now provide integration jobs for 487 people, and in 2025, 62% of the 803 people the foundation accompanied found a job. The rest of the capacity is waiting for the market to catch up. Formació i Treball expects demand to grow once rules requiring recycled fibres in new products take effect, and it has already partnered with large companies in the sector to supply them.
