DE-LYCRA/DCC
The LYCRA Company, a global leader in developing innovative, sustainable solutions for the apparel and personal care industries, announced today that it has signed a letter of intent with Dairen Chemical Corporation (DCC) to convert QIRA®—the next generation of 1,4 butanediol (BDO)—into low-impact PTMEG, the main ingredient in patented bio-derived LYCRA® fiber. Dairen will be the first company in the world to mass produce this low-impact bio-PTMEG at scale.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240509462079/en/
Left to Right: Steve Stewart, chief brand and innovation officer, The LYCRA Company, and Shean-Tung Lin, Chairman, Dairen Chemical Corporation (DCC), sign a letter of intent for DCC to convert QIRA® into low-impact PTMEG for bio-derived LYCRA® fiber. (Photo: Business Wire)
In September 2022, The LYCRA Company and Qore® announced they were joining forces to enable the production of bio-derived LYCRA® fiber made with QIRA®. Now, DCC joins this distinctive collaboration, converting QIRA® into bio-PTMEG. This unique PTMEG will make up the renewable portion of LYCRA® fiber, accounting for 70% of the fiber’s content. It is being made exclusively for The LYCRA Company to its stringent specifications. With its low-impact allyl alcohol process, DCC has pioneered a technology that creates the lowest-impact PTMEG available, which is cleaner and has a lower carbon footprint than product produced with natural gas or coal.1
The LYCRA Company, Qore®, and DCC are united by a shared commitment to R&D, health and safety, sustainability, and conservation. To mark this event, Steve Stewart, The LYCRA Company’s chief brand and innovation officer, presented DCC with a Green Partner Award. The award acknowledges DCC’s ongoing sustainability efforts and commitment to creating low-impact products.
“Our collaboration heralds a brand-new era of environmentally conscious production activities, fueled by our shared commitment to reducing carbon footprints and developing world-leading eco-friendly solutions,” said DCC’s chairman, Lin Shean-Tung. “Sustainability is not merely a trend, but an imperative for the future of our planet. We are honored to receive the Green Partner Award and embark on this journey alongside The LYCRA Company, advancing sustainable practices in the industry.”
Available in early 2025, patented bio-derived LYCRA® fiber made with QIRA® will be the world’s first renewable spandex available on a large scale. By using annually renewable dent corn, an initial screening calculation indicates that the carbon footprint of LYCRA® fiber potentially could be reduced by up to 44 percent2 compared to LYCRA® fiber without bio-derived materials. Further, the fiber will offer equivalent performance to traditional LYCRA® fiber, making it an easy replacement for mills, brands and retailers.
“We are excited to collaborate with DCC to bring bio-derived LYCRA® fiber made with QIRA® to market and realize our shared vision for a more sustainable value chain,” said Stewart. “Given the combination of using bio-derived input from corn, plus conversion at a state-of-the-art QORE® facility run on wind power, and transformation to PTMEG using DCC’s low-impact process, we anticipate the potential for additional reductions as we go into production.”
For many years, Dairen has demonstrated its sustainability efforts in raw materials management, waste elimination, process enhancement, innovations, and more. It has also achieved significantly lower carbon emissions in its product offerings than its competition.
“Sustainability has evolved from fulfilling requirements to being a competitive advantage,” said Simon Chuang, vice president of global sourcing and procurement at The LYCRA Company. “We’re committed to selecting, promoting, and expanding our business with supply partners like DCC who embrace and drive meaningful sustainability efforts.”
Visit lycra.com/qira to learn more about bio-derived LYCRA® fiber made with QIRA®.
1Estimate from Cradle-to-Gate Screening PCF for a representative DAIREN PTMEG manufacturing facility, year 2023, prepared by DNV Business Assurance Co., Ltd.
2Estimate from Cradle-to-Gate Screening LCA for a representative LYCRA® fiber manufacturing facility, June 2022, prepared by Ramboll Americas Engineering Solutions, Inc.
About The LYCRA Company
The LYCRA Company innovates and produces fiber and technology solutions for the apparel and personal care industries and owns the leading consumer brands: LYCRA®, LYCRA HyFit®, LYCRA® T400®, COOLMAX®, THERMOLITE®, ELASPAN®, SUPPLEX® and TACTEL®. Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., The LYCRA Company is recognized worldwide for its sustainable products, technical expertise, and marketing support. The LYCRA Company focuses on adding value to its customers’ products by developing unique innovations designed to meet the consumer’s need for comfort and lasting performance. For more information, visit lycra.com.
About Qore® LLC
Formed through a joint venture by Cargill and HELM AG, Qore® helps leading brands replace fossil-based chemistries with bio-derived intermediates. At the heart of the joint venture is the production of QIRA®, the next-generation bio-derived 1,4-butanediol (BDO). Made biologically through the fermentation of plant-based sugars, QIRA® can save up to 86% of greenhouse gas emissions when replacing today’s widely used chemical intermediates made from traditional fossil sources. Bio-derived QIRA® can be used the same way as its fossil counterpart but with significantly better environmental performance. Qore® and QIRA® are trademarks of Qore® LLC. For more information and inquiries visit https://www.myqira.com/.
About Dairen Chemical Corporation (DCC)
Founded in 1979, DCC is a leading maker of acetyl and allyl chemicals. The company board has been chaired by Mr. Lin Shean-Tung since June 2019. DCC operates seven production sites in Asia and serves customers in more than one hundred countries. Major products include Vinyl Acetate Monomer, Vinyl Acetate Ethylene (VAE) Emulsion, VAE Redispersible Powder, Allyl Alcohol, 1,4-Butanediol and PTMEG. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, its productions sites are in Taiwan, China, Singapore and Malaysia. Under the leadership of Chairman Lin, DCC is expanding its international activities and enhancing its global presence.
LYCRA® is a trademark of The LYCRA Company.
QIRA® is a trademark of Qore®.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240509462079/en/
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
FPT and E.ON Extend Partnership to Drive AI-Powered Energy Management Innovation11.11.2025 02:00:00 CET | Press release
Global technology and IT services provider FPT and E.ON Optimum, the digital solutions arm of E.ON UK, under E.ON Group, announced a new agreement to extend their collaboration in digital energy management. The signing marks the next phase of a partnership established in 2022, reaffirming both corporations’ shared vision of harnessing technology to accelerate innovation and sustainability in the energy sector. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251110039775/en/ FPT and E.ON Optimum leaders at the signing ceremony to extend their partnership in AI-powered energy management. Under this agreement, FPT will continue to support the development and operation of E.ON Optimum’s solution platform, a cloud-based energy management system that gives business energy users timely, flexible data analysis, allowing for better and faster decisions on net-zero energy usage. The next phase focuses on maintaining and enhancing web a
Ant International Open Sources Time-Series Transformer AI Model to Enable More Businesses to Benefit from AI-Powered Forecasting11.11.2025 01:30:00 CET | Press release
Ant International currently deploys the Falcon TST AI Model to forecast cashflow and FX exposure with more than 90% accuracy Ant International, a leading global digital payment, digitisation, and financial technology provider, has released its proprietary Falcon TST (Time-Series Transformer) AI model, the industry-first Mixture of Experts architecture-based big data model with multiple patch tokenizers, supported by up to 2.5 billion parameters. The model has also achieved state-of-the-art zero-shot results on well-acknowledged long-term forecasting benchmarks, such as absolute mean error rates. Deployed internally at Ant International to manage cashflow and FX exposure on an hourly, daily and weekly basis, Falcon TST has achieved accuracy rates of over 90%, and cut the company’s FX costs by up to 60%. Ant International also collaborated with various industry partners to deploy the model in different use cases, such as in helping businesses mitigate FX cost and volatility, as well as t
The Empire State Building Holiday Celebrations Include: Radio City Rockettes 100th Anniversary Exhibits, Visits from Santa, Holiday Décor, Movie Screenings, Pop-ups, Lightings, and More11.11.2025 00:08:00 CET | Press release
The Empire State Building (ESB) today announced its Holiday Celebration plans include: holiday décor, classic movie screenings, local pop-ups, festive tower lightings, and a holiday takeover with the Radio City Rockettes to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year at New York City’s number one attraction. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251110124149/en/ The Empire State Building Holiday Celebrations Include: Radio City Rockettes 100th Anniversary Exhibits, Visits from Santa, Holiday Décor, Movie Screenings, Pop-ups, Lightings, and More “There is no better place to celebrate the holidays in New York City than at the Empire State Building Observatory,” said Dan Rogoski, General Manager at the Empire State Building Observatory. “This year, New Yorkers and visitors will enjoy the best of the holiday season in our iconic venue as we celebrate 100 years of the Radio City Rockettes.” Deck the Halls From the grou
Megaport to Acquire Latitude.sh, Creating an Industry-leading Compute and Network-as-a-Service Platform to Power High-performance Applications and AI Workloads Globally10.11.2025 23:17:00 CET | Press release
Megaport Limited (ASX: MP1), the world’s leading Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) provider, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Latitude.sh, a leading global Compute-as-a-Service company delivering high-performance CPU and GPU infrastructure on demand. Following completion of the acquisition, the combined capabilities will create a global platform that unites Megaport’s private, high-speed connectivity fabric with Latitude.sh’s compute infrastructure, enabling enterprises to rapidly deploy and connect critical workloads across more than 1,000 data centres in 26 countries. “Megaport has long been trusted by the world’s largest enterprises to move workloads seamlessly between data centers and the cloud,” said Michael Reid, CEO of Megaport. “By bringing Latitude.sh into the fold, we’re extending that promise beyond the network, and into high-performance, optimized compute, complementing cloud providers. Together, we will not only serve the massive traditional compute ma
Svante and Södra Launch EU-Based Carbon Capture Pilot to Advance Biogenic CO₂ Utilization10.11.2025 22:49:00 CET | Press release
Svante Technologies Inc. (“Svante”), a global leader in solid sorbent-based carbon capture and removal solutions, is proud to share that Södra, Sweden’s largest forest-owner association, has announced it will test Svante’s carbon capture technology at the Värö industrial site in early 2026 and evaluate opportunities for large-scale capture in the future. This pilot project marks Svante’s first deployment in the EU forestry sector and represents a significant step toward scaling biogenic carbon capture in pulp and paper production. The pilot will evaluate the performance of Svante’s proprietary solid sorbent filters in capturing biogenic CO₂ emissions from Södra’s pulp operations, with the goal of enabling new circular value chains and supporting Sweden’s climate targets. A Strategic Step Toward Circular Bioeconomy Södra’s pulp production generates biogenic CO₂, which is a renewable carbon source with potential applications across food, water purification, chemical manufacturing, and e-
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom