Top Sources for Recycling Nylon Fishing Nets in Europe

A recycler that buys end-of-life fishing nets wants one thing above all, a steady supply of clean nylon. Nylon (polyamide 6, or PA6) is the polymer that recycled-yarn makers pay for, and it is concentrated in a few kinds of fishing gear. This guide maps where those nets sit in Europe, using the latest fleet data from Eurostat, and explains the producer-responsibility rules that now decide who pays to collect them.

The question comes from fieldwork. In 2021 and 2022 we worked with the Seychelles government and the tuna industry on the ReNeT project, designing a circular system for the purse-seine nets piling up in Port Victoria. That work led to Brikole, a local company that sells the nets to international recyclers. In 2022 the net recycler Bureo asked us to map where comparable volumes of nylon net could be found in Europe. This guide is that analysis, run on 2025 data.

Which fishing nets are made of nylon

Not every net is worth the same to a recycler. The European Commission’s 2020 study on circular design of fishing gear found that six polymers make up most nets sold in Europe (polyamide, polyester, polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, aramid and high-density polyethylene), combined in up to 700 different ways. That mix is the main reason so little gear gets recycled.

Three findings from the same study shape where a nylon recycler should look.

• Purse seines and gill nets are simple gear. The study lists fish-farming nets, gill nets and purse seines as gear that is “not typically complex”, while a trawl can combine nylon, polypropylene, polyethylene, steel and rubber.
• Purse-seine nylon recycles well. Research cited in the study found that PA6 from purse-seine nets came out of mechanical recycling with properties close to virgin plastic.
• Few plants take nets. Most European respondents sent their gear to Aquafil in Slovenia, which only processes nylon, or to Plastix in Denmark, which takes several polymers.

So this guide follows the three net groups in Eurostat’s fleet data, which are surrounding nets (mostly purse seines), seines, and gill and entangling nets. Trawls are left out of the nylon count because their netting is usually mixed with other plastics, even though trawlers hold the largest share of EU engine power.

Where Europe’s fishing power sits

Engine power is the best public proxy for how much gear a fleet uses. A more powerful vessel tows or hauls a larger net and replaces it more often. Across the EU, Norway and Iceland, registered fishing vessels had 6.9 million kW of engine power in 2025.

Norway alone has 21% of that power, more than any EU country, with about 5,000 vessels. Italy, France and Spain follow with 10% to 14% each. Greece is the mirror image of Norway. It has more than twice as many vessels (11,452) but a quarter of the engine power, because most Greek boats are small coastal craft.

Country	Engine power (kW)	Vessels	Share of power
Norway	1,447,267	5,065	20.9%
Italy	951,153	12,321	13.7%
France	901,802	5,856	13.0%
Spain	729,770	8,324	10.5%
Iceland (2024)	453,802	1,531	6.5%
Greece	347,366	11,452	5.0%
Portugal	341,520	6,782	4.9%
Croatia	309,976	6,648	4.5%
Netherlands	243,331	767	3.5%
Denmark	190,201	1,708	2.7%
Ireland	174,635	2,022	2.5%
Finland	171,018	3,200	2.5%

There is a catch with the two non-EU fleets. Eurostat publishes Norway’s and Iceland’s totals but does not split them by gear, so their nylon share cannot be read from the same table. A recycler looking north has to work from the national registers kept by Norway’s Directorate of Fisheries and Iceland’s Directorate of Fisheries. The United Kingdom has not reported to Eurostat since 2019 and is left out.

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Where the EU’s net-based fleet sits

Inside the EU the picture is sharper. Vessels whose main gear is a surrounding net, a seine or a gill net had 1.78 million kW in 2025, about 35% of the EU fleet’s engine power. Six southern countries hold 79% of it.

Spain leads with 21%, and half of its whole fleet’s power is net-based. France, Greece, Croatia, Italy and Portugal follow. Italy is the outlier. It has the EU’s largest fleet by power, but most of it trawls, so only 19% is net-based.

Country	Surrounding nets (kW)	Gill and entangling nets (kW)	All net gear (kW)
Spain	193,358	173,111	366,469
France	72,757	216,910	298,429
Greece	40,488	173,334	218,373
Croatia	63,721	130,853	195,929
Italy	127,103	49,095	176,198
Portugal	34,422	116,894	153,362
Finland	0	100,764	100,801
Denmark	0	50,994	56,674
Bulgaria	53	37,912	38,019
Cyprus	570	29,165	29,735
Ireland	7,339	17,359	26,932
Germany	0	22,394	22,394

The two gear groups behave very differently for a collector. Gill nets are spread across 37,943 vessels, more than half the EU fleet, most of them small boats averaging 32 kW. Their nets are light and change often, so a collection scheme has to reach many ports to gather a full container. Purse seines are the opposite.

Purse seiners come in two sizes

The EU has 3,134 vessels whose main gear is a surrounding net. Spain has 35% of their engine power, Italy 23% and France 13%. The average size of those vessels varies more than tenfold between countries, and that matters more for collection than the national total.

France’s 90 purse seiners average 808 kW, and Spain’s 499 average 387 kW. These fleets include the large tropical tuna seiners, which fish far from Europe and land in a few ports abroad. Under the protocol to the EU and Seychelles fisheries agreement that runs from 27 July 2026 to 26 July 2030, 30 EU purse seiners can fish in Seychelles waters, 17 Spanish, 12 French and one Italian. Nets from seiners working in the Indian Ocean can end their life far from Europe. In 2021 we found them piling up on the quay in Victoria.

Italy’s 1,881 purse seiners average 68 kW. They are small coastal boats, so their nets stay in Italy but arrive in small lots from many harbours. Croatia (205 vessels at 311 kW) sits in between.

A shrinking supply of net-based fishing

Any business plan built on these volumes should allow for a fleet that is getting smaller. Between 2019 and 2025 the EU’s whole fleet lost 5% of its engine power, but the gear groups that carry the most nylon fell faster.

Engine power in surrounding nets fell 14%, from 631,507 kW to 544,713 kW, and the number of purse seiners fell from 3,381 to 3,134. Seines lost 38% of their power, most of it between 2022 and 2024. Gill nets held up better, down 4%. Fewer active vessels means fewer nets retired each year, so a recycler sizing a plant on today’s flows should expect less from the active fleet and look at old gear stored in ports and at aquaculture nets as well.

Who pays to collect the nets

Since 31 December 2024, every EU country has had to run an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme for fishing gear that contains plastic. Article 8 of the Single-Use Plastics Directive (EU) 2019/904 makes producers pay for the separate collection of waste gear delivered to port reception facilities, for its transport and treatment, and for awareness campaigns aimed at fishers. Producers here are the firms that make, sell or import the gear, not the fishers who use it. Countries with a coastline must also set a national minimum annual collection rate for recycling. The Directive sets no EU-wide number.

Two other EU laws work alongside it. Under the port reception facilities Directive (EU) 2019/883, ships pay an indirect fee and can hand in fishing gear without a direct charge, including waste caught in their nets while fishing. Under the revised fisheries control Regulation (EU) 2023/2842, EU vessels must carry equipment to retrieve lost gear and record any gear they cannot retrieve in their logbook, from 10 January 2026 (10 January 2028 for vessels under 12 metres). On the design side, the European standards body CEN published the EN 17988 series on circular design of fishing gear in January 2025.

The first EU figures

The first reported data, for 2022, appeared in a Commission report of 16 April 2026. EU countries reported 22,900 tonnes of fishing gear placed on the market and 7,500 tonnes of waste gear collected, a collection rate of 32.7%. With the EEA-EFTA countries included, the totals were 67,000 tonnes and 24,700 tonnes (36.8%). Norway, Lithuania, France and Portugal reported the largest amounts placed on the market.

The Commission asks readers to treat these first-year figures with caution and not to compare countries. It also found a strong correlation between the gear each country reports and the tonnage of its fishing fleet, which is why fleet size works as a guide to where the nets are. Its evaluation of the Directive is due by 3 July 2027 and may propose binding EU collection rates for waste fishing gear.

Where national schemes stand

Country	Legal basis	Status and collection target
Spain	Ley 7/2022, art. 60.5	The law required a fishing-gear scheme before 1 January 2025. The implementing royal decree was still a draft in October 2025, and none had been published in the BOE by November 2026.
France	Code de l’environnement, art. L541-10-1	EPR applies to plastic fishing gear from 1 January 2025. Decree 2025-775 of August 2025 sets the conditions.
Italy	Ministerial decree of October 2023, under D.Lgs. 196/2021	Minimum collection rate of 15% by weight of gear placed on the market, for 2024 and 2025.
Portugal	Decreto-Lei 83/2022	In effect from 31 December 2024. Collection targets of 15% by 2027, 30% by 2030 and 60% by 2035, with 95% of collected gear recycled.
Denmark	BEK 1751/2024	Since 1 January 2025, Dansk Producentansvar assigns ports to producers each year, and each producer must take back all end-of-life commercial gear its ports hand over.
Netherlands	Besluit kunststofproducten voor eenmalig gebruik	EPR from 31 December 2024. Minimum rate of 23% for 2022, rising three points a year to 2027.
Ireland	S.I. 612/2022	From 31 December 2024, producers must belong to an approved body that meets the national collection rate.
Norway	Waste regulation, chapter 7B	Norway applies the Directive through the EEA Agreement. Its rules took effect on 1 January 2026, and the duties to collect and treat gear start on 1 March 2027.

For a recycler, the shift matters more than any single target. Collection used to depend on fishers and ports paying to get rid of old nets. Under EPR, producers fund it, and the schemes they set up increasingly decide which ports are served and where the collected nets go. The Danish model, where each producer is assigned ports, shows how directly a scheme can shape the flow of material.

What this means for a nylon collection plan

1. Start with Spain. It combines the EU’s largest purse-seine fleet with a large gill-net fleet, so one country offers both bulk lots from large seiners and steady small lots from coastal boats.
2. Follow the tuna fleets abroad. Some of the biggest French and Spanish seiners work from ports such as Victoria. A European recycler can source those nets through the companies that already collect them there, as the Seychelles project showed.
3. Treat the Mediterranean as a consolidation problem. Italy, Greece, Croatia and Portugal have large net fleets made of small vessels. The cost sits in gathering, cleaning and baling small lots, so regional hubs and port reception facilities matter more than the national total.
4. Check the national producer-responsibility scheme first. Where a scheme operates, producers already pay for collection and the scheme decides where the nets go. A recycler’s first contract may be with the scheme, not with fishers.
5. Look north with national data. Norway has a fifth of the region’s fishing power. Its gear split is not in Eurostat, so check the Norwegian register before planning volumes there.

In the UK, Scotland is now designing its own end-of-life gear system. The Scottish Government’s May 2026 reports tested six options with industry, and a regional collection and processing facility had the most support. Where that sits in the wider policy and funding picture is in the Scotland circular economy system map.

How we measured it

All fleet figures come from Eurostat’s dataset fishing fleet by type of gear and engine power (fish_fleet_gp), built from the EU fleet register, in its release of 29 April 2026. We used 2025 values for the EU and Norway and 2024 for Iceland, the latest each country reported. Eurostat records each vessel under its main gear only, and some 2025 values are marked provisional. Engine power is a proxy for the amount of netting in use, not a measured tonnage of waste nets. The status of the national producer-responsibility schemes was checked against official journals and government sites in November 2026.

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