DE-LYCRA/DCC
9.5.2024 03:01:32 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
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
Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands21.10.2026 19:15:00 CEST | Press release
Phoenix builds a full quiz from a prompt or a document, catches broken logic before shoppers do and shows what every answer earns in Shopify revenue. Octane AI, the quiz and zero-party data platform for Shopify brands, launched Phoenix in October, its biggest release to date. Merchants describe the quiz they want or upload what they already have, and Phoenix builds it, checks it, personalizes the results and keeps improving it with experiments. One beta customer turned a single document into a complete product-launch quiz: “I attached it to Phoenix, and it built the whole thing, all the pages. It understood everything, not just the text but the logic behind it.” Across all live Octane AI quizzes, 15% of shoppers who finish a quiz place an order. Yet building one has meant hours of writing rules by hand, custom code for design and clicking through every path to find broken results. Phoenix handles those hard parts, from building a quiz to improving it after launch. “Since day one, we've
Cognite Earns Corporate Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon Petroleum Corporation21.10.2026 19:06:00 CEST | Press release
Cognite today announced it has been named Corporate Supplier of the Year winner in Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s 11th Annual Supplier Recognition Awards. The Supplier Recognition Awards is a program sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corporation to honor suppliers that positively impacted the company’s business throughout the previous calendar year. “There’s a reason ‘Impact’ is one of Cognite’s most important core values,” said Girish Rishi, CEO of Cognite. “For us, the ultimate measure of our performance is delivering quantifiable value for our customers. From that perspective, the Corporate Supplier of the Year award from Marathon is particularly meaningful. Marathon Petroleum is an innovator, and to receive this recognition is a great honor to the Cognite community.” The Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon is the latest honor Cognite has received in 2026: In May, Cognite ranked 15th on CNBC’s Disruptor50 list, honoring venture-backed companies innovating across industries, exp
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. to Webcast Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion Presentations on November 4, 202621.10.2026 18:48:00 CEST | Press release
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) today announced that it will webcast presentations from its Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. The event will feature presentations from Stéphane de La Faverie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as members of the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and local leaders. The presentations will highlight the Company’s strategy and capabilities in China, Beauty Reimagined in action, and how China serves as a blueprint for deploying the Company’s global capabilities to drive sustainable growth and stronger profitability. Due to limited capacity, in-person attendance is by invitation only. Interested parties can access the live webcast on Wednesday, November 4th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. China Standard Time (12:00 a.m. ET) at Investors – The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. A replay of the webcast wi
Future Health and Bridge for Billions to Launch Programme Strengthening Health Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets21.10.2026 17:50:00 CEST | Press release
New programme will support locally rooted health entrepreneurs to build stronger ventures and deepen their impact in the communities they serve The programme responds to persistent gaps in capital and specialist support for promising health innovation across emerging markets First phase will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incubation to early-acceleration ventures in Africa and Asia Entrepreneurs will receive tailored support, with selected groups later having the opportunity to access Abu Dhabi’s health innovations ecosystem Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi and Bridge for Billions will launch a new entrepreneurship programme designed to strengthen promising health ventures in emerging markets and help locally-developed solutions reach more people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261021719421/en/ The first phase of the programme will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incub
Hephaestus Exits Stealth Having Raised $17.2M to Supply Rare-Earth-Free HTS Superconductors and Build Low-Cost Fusion Power21.10.2026 16:48:00 CEST | Press release
CiRi Ventures leads latest funding round as novel HTS magnets head to manufacturing in 2027, ahead of a negative triangularity reactor targeting net energy gain by 2030 Hephaestus today emerged from stealth with solutions that address two of the largest cost drivers in fusion power: the high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and the edge-localized modes (ELMs – major plasma instabilities) that drive up the cost and complexity of conventional reactor designs. The company also announced the close of a new funding round led by CiRi Ventures. Hephaestus was founded in London in 2019 with a single mission – to help make fusion energy cheap enough to compete on the grid. Its AI plasma solver initially swept the full space of tokamak design parameters, unconstrained by the legacy designs and materials much of the industry is already committed to, and identified negative triangularity (NT), which inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, as the most li
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