With growing pressure on the textile and apparel industry to meet tough decarbonization goals, material suppliers are stepping up to lead sustainable changes early in the supply chain. At the Sourcing Journal Fall Summit, panel, Malvina Hoxha, U.S. director of textiles marketing at Hyosung TNC, explained how the company is expanding bio-based materials and working with partners to help brands meet their climate targets.
A key part of Hyosung’s strategy is investing heavily in bio-based spandex, aiming to offer a wide range of sustainable options. “When we look at sustainability, sheer volumes and performance needs for brands and retailers, we need a plethora of solutions, and we have a portfolio approach to this,” Hoxha said.
To move from early material ideas to full-scale production, Hyosung invested up to $1 billion in a new manufacturing facility in Vietnam. This integrated plant uses BDO (butanediol), an important ingredient made from sugar cane, to provide raw materials for textiles, footwear, packaging and automotive industries.
To execute this systems-level approach without prior background, Hyosung teamed up with sugar trader Czarnikow. “We don’t have capabilities and know-how around sugar,” Hoxha said. “We know how to produce fiber. So, it was critical there to align ourselves to partners that really understand that landscape. By utilizing this material, we’re able to lower our footprint by an estimated 45 percent in carbon reductions when compared to our conventional operations and production of spandex.”
Hoxha said introducing new materials often leads to a “chicken-or-the-egg” problem with upfront investments and demand. In the past, raw material suppliers often met resistance from partners further down the supply chain, who did not want to take on responsibility.
“Seven to ten years ago, the conversation that we were having with brands was effectively, ‘Hey, this is really interesting, but we’re a brand. We don’t buy fiber. Work with our supply chain, figure it out with the mills,’” Hoxha said.
Now, things are changing as brands set up teams focused on sustainability and innovation. Hyosung works with over 10,000 mills worldwide, but about 30 to 40 active suppliers are leading the way in bringing bio-based spandex directly to brands. To help smaller, innovative brands get past minimum order quantity barriers, Hyosung combines demand from several partners. The activewear market has been especially quick to adopt these changes.
Beyond volume commitments, Hoxha also pointed out that to grow sustainable solutions, the industry needs to rethink how it looks at costs and prices throughout the whole value chain, not just focus on order volumes. “Every single article of clothing that we have on has roughly either 2 percent or 5 percent of products within it. Most often, what we invite brands to think about is to think about this fiber category as you’re thinking about the holistic approach of the business and how you’re sourcing.”
Meanwhile, with new digital product passports (DPPs) and regulations coming, traceability has gone from a trend to a must-have in the industry. “Traceability is becoming table stakes,” Hoxha said. To ensure transparency, Hyosung teamed up with blockchain platform Textile Genesis to track its “Regen” sustainable products, focusing on bio-based lines.
At the same time, larger trends like rising geopolitical tensions and unstable oil prices are changing the economics of synthetic materials. As the cost of petrochemical feedstocks for virgin synthetics rises by as much as 60 percent or more, the price difference between virgin and bio-based options is getting smaller.
Hoxha sees these economic changes as a chance for the synthetic materials industry to rethink its long-term plans. “For us in the synthetic marketplace, it’s going to force us to really think about our business holistically, encourage innovation and investment towards circularity and force us to innovate,” Hoxha said. “We need to have better-performing materials that can last longer and drive towards durability while we’re still figuring out the circularity aspect.”
