South Korean synthetic fiber manufacturing company Hyosung has set out to increase its spandex output in Turkey in order to raise its share of the European and the Middle East markets.
Last month, the company kicked off a 27 million dollar project to expand spandex output there by 5,000 tons to 25,000 tons by the end of the first half of 2017. By then, the construction of the company’s new factory in Quzhou, China, with an annual capacity of 16,000 tons, would be completed. The company’s total global spandex output capacity would reach 221,000 tons next year.
In 2009, Hyosung built a spandex factory in Çerkezköy, Tekirdağ, about 100 kilometers away from Istanbul, with a view to targeting the European and Middle East markets. “To maintain the No.1 position in the global market, we have to preemptively respond to exploding demands for spandex from Europe and the Middle East. While ramping up the supply of spandex, we will not neglect to develop new products,” Cho Hyun-Joon, president of the company, emphasized.
The company expects that the market share of creora®, Hyosung’s spandex brand, would surpass 31 percent after the capacity increase. It means that one out of every three elastic garments worn by the world’s population of 7.4 billion would be made of creora®. Spandex is used for underwear, swim suits, jeans, sportswear, diapers, Industrial-grade gloves, etc.
Since Hyosung became the first Korean company to independently develop spandex manufacturing technology in 1992, the company’s creora® has continued to gain ground in the global market. Hyosung has taken up the largest chunk of the global spandex market for the past six years.
