Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Hyun-joon.

Hyosung is accelerating efforts to enhance the quality of its global No. 1 products such as spandex and tire cord. Hyosung is striving to ramp up their competitive edge, company officials said. Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Hyun-joon said, “Hyosung executives and staff members need to be proud of the technology and products we produce, and ‘technology competitiveness’ should be established as Hyosung’s DNA.”

Hyosung Technology Research Institute and Hyosung Heavy Industries Research Institute serve as the forces behind the competitive edge of items produced by Hyosung.

Hyosung Technology Research Institute, established in 1971, became the first research institute associated with a company. The research institute has developed Hyosung’s mainstay products and new growth engines such as carbon textiles and polyketone.

Hyosung TNC’s spandex brand creora has maintained the global No. 1 position since 2010. Spandex is a functional fiber, dubbed “semiconductor of textile” Hyosung began the development of the spandex and the first Korean company to develop the spandex.

Hyosung has developed a diverse variety of products tailored to meet customers’ needs. Among the representative items are creora Fresh, a functional spandex that helps people wear clothes freshly for a longtime by eliminating smell of sweat or foot odor in daily lives or after sports actions.

creora Fresh provides the deodorizing function by chemically neutralizing such odor diffusing materials as ammonia and acetic acid causing smell of sweat and isovaleric-acid causing foot odor.

Hyosung’s applying creora Fit Square to skinny jeans, introduced at the Shanghai InterTextile 2018 held in September, became the subject of keen attention among global textile communities.

Hyosung won the Korean Engineering Award in recognition for developing a high heat-resisting, highly extensible spandex.

Hyosung is developing a variety of functional products in fabric sectors such as nylon and polyester. Among the representative items are fabrics providing cooling touches and absorbing heat from skin and others soaking up sweats and other fluids and being dried up quickly.

Industrial fabrics such as tire reinforcement items and yarns for airbags are considered in global high-quality levels. Development knowhow Hyosung has accumulated in the fabric industry sector has been employed to the development of high-performance special fabrics such as aramid and carbon textile.

This contributes to offering Hyosung’s head start in research into bio fabrics and smart fabrics, compared to its rival companies, Hyosung officials said.

Hyosung TNC officials explain about the spandex brand creora during a meeting with foreign buyers. (Photos: Hyosung Group)

Hyosung Plans to Build New Tire Cord Plant in Vietnam

Hyosung Advanced Materials will invest $152 million (170 billion won) to build a new tire cord plant in the Thang Industrial Zone in Quang Nam Province, central Vietnam.

Tire cords are a part of the “core reinforcement” designed to reduce abrasion and maintain tire shape in the case of puncturing.

The tire cord produced by Hyosung Advanced Materials ranks first with a 45 percent share in the global polyester tire cord market. Hyosung has so far invested $2.9 billion to make Vietnam a 2nd production center. Hyosung invested $1.5 billion and set up Vietnam Dong Nai Corp. in the Nhon Trach Industrial Complex near Ho Chi Minh City in 2007.

Dong Nai Corp. posted 1.7 trillion won in sales in 2017 and accounted for 1 percent of Vietnam’s total exports in the year.

Hyosung established a production operation in Ba Ria-Vung Province in southern Vietnam early this year. The company is building a polypropylene (PP) plant, dehydrogenation (DH) factory and an LPG storage tank with $1.3 billion in investments.