Hyosung TNC Scales Bio-Based Elastane From

The stretch fiber woven into every pair of performance leggings, every sculpting swimsuit, every body-skimming denim silhouette has, until now, traced its origins to fossil fuels. Hyosung TNC has spent $1 billion to change that. The South Korean company, which holds the largest market share of any elastane manufacturer in the world, launched commercial production of its regen™ BIO Elastane in April 2026, the culmination of a supply chain built from scratch over two years.

The system runs vertically: sugarcane feedstock converts into Bio-BDO at a newly built plant in Vietnam, which sits adjacent to Hyosung's existing elastane manufacturing facility. That co-location is deliberate. Bio-BDO feeds into Bio-PTMG production on site, which then becomes the raw material for the elastane fiber itself, all within a single integrated value chain. BDO, or butanediol, is the critical chemical intermediate in elastane production and has historically been derived entirely from non-renewable resources. Replacing it at industrial scale is precisely the problem the industry has been unable to solve cheaply or quickly.

Hyosung's partnership with Geno, a sustainable materials company that developed proprietary fermentation technology to produce BDO from plant-based feedstocks, made the conversion technically feasible. The Vietnam plant has the capacity to produce up to 50,000 tons of bio-BDO by end of 2026. Simon Whitmarsh-Knight, Hyosung TNC's global sustainability director for textiles, described the structural importance of getting this right: "For the first time, the industry will have an integrated supply of bio-based elastane in one region, from raw material to fiber."

The feedstock switch from corn to sugarcane, which Hyosung announced as part of this initiative, compounds the environmental gains. Sugarcane sequesters carbon more effectively per hectare than corn, and its agricultural byproduct, bagasse, functions as a renewable energy source at the production site. Feedstock sourcing is verified through the VIVE Programme, providing third-party traceability across the value chain. Life cycle assessments of the existing regen™ BIO Max elastane already showed a 27% lower carbon footprint and 82% less ozone depletion than conventional spandex; the fully sugarcane-derived system targets a 55% reduction in carbon emissions compared to fossil-based elastane, alongside additional reductions in water use during processing.

Whitmarsh-Knight has been emphatic that the performance argument holds: there is no compromise on durability, recovery, or stretch characteristics compared to either the corn-derived predecessor or traditional fossil-based spandex. That claim matters most in activewear, intimates, and denim, the three categories Hyosung is targeting first, where brands and mills will not accept any degradation in hand-feel or mechanical performance regardless of sustainability credentials.

The internal timeline that carried regen™ BIO Elastane from investment decision to production line ran through plant upgrades in the second half of 2025 and bio-BDO output beginning in Q1 2026. Apparel using the fiber is projected to reach retail in 2027. Hyosung's longer corporate horizon sets a carbon-neutral target for 2050, but the Vietnam facility represents the infrastructure milestone that makes everything between now and then plausible.