Kolon One&Only Tower
Magokdong-ro 110, Gangseo-gu, Seoul,
Republic of Korea
02-3677-5158
[email protected]
www.kolonindustries.com

Kolon Industries is one of South Korea’s leading chemical companies, manufacturing textiles, automotive materials, resin and more. The company started its business in 1957 as the first Korean manufacturer of nylon yarn. Since its founding, Kolon expanded its business to polyester yarn and tire cords and installed its first spunbond nonwovens production line in 1985, making it the first producer of PET spunbond in Korea.

Kolon Industries started its business at a time when the Korean economy was rapidly growing. The company grew bigger together with its accumulating textile manufacturing technologies, expanding business areas into producing PET tire cords and chamude, a different type of nonwoven fabric that is a substitute for genuine leather. “There were no other competitors in the region at that time, making it a great opportunity for us to enter the nonwovens market,” says Hyunjun Choi, Kolon’s vice president of the Nonwoven Business. “It was the ideal time to apply our developed technologies on spunbond nonwoven fabrics as they were widely used in the industrial field. Being the first to manufacture nylon yarn in Korea, we also became the first Korean company to make polyester spunbond nonwoven products.”

Kolon’s influence in the nonwovens industry continued to grow, especially after 2011 when it successfully set up a new, high-tech production line. “Based on our innovative technologies, we currently have the No. 1 market share and production scale in the Korean nonwoven field,” says Choi.

As a PET spunbond nonwovens manufacturer, Kolon adopted a spunbond method that distributes filaments randomly and the bonding methods include flatbond, pointbond and needlepunch.

Kolon’s products are widely used in applications that require strong mechanical strength, from carpets to automotive parts, filtration, civil engineering and architecture. “We have secured loyal customers from leading manufacturers all around the world by applying specialized technologies to satisfy requirements for each application,” says Eunji Jeong, senior manager of the Spunbond Business Team. “Most of the markets we belong to are highly affected by external market factors and although demand is currently fluctuating due to inflation and high interest rates, we expect that the markets will continue to grow in the forthcoming years.”

To provide more products with new functionality, Kolon is developing technology to diversify filaments that cover a wide range of denier and composite materials other than PET. The company also plans to expand its application and business areas through active partnerships and open innovations.

“We are open to adding new capabilities and improving quality in the future through investment of advanced, high-tech production facilities,” says Choi. “We also plan to strengthen our position in the nonwovens business by developing new high value-added products.”

Preemptively noticing market demand for sustainable products, Kolon significantly invested in developing rPET (recycled PET) product technology. It successfully launched ‘Finon Eco’ in 2020 through this effort, using 100% recycled PET bottle materials. ‘Finon Eco’ is an eco-friendly version of its original spunbond product Finon, which reduced GWP (Global Warming Potential) by decreasing carbon dioxide equivalents by 43% compared to Finon, since it applied post-consumer recycled polyester from plastic bottles. “Even though we faced many technical challenges in replacing the original virgin PET with rPET, we succeeded in producing rPET products, which show the same performance with the original PET, with specialized technology that we have built through these years,” says Jeong.

Upon launching, its rPET products were certified with the Global Recycled Standard (GRS) that strictly examines the whole cycle from collecting recycled raw materials to processing, production and sales. In addition, Kolon Industries received the first EPD certification in both the Korean nonwovens industry and the global primary carpet backing and filtration media industry. EPD is a system that quantifies and shows the environmental impact of the entire product life process, from raw material to production, distribution, use and disposal.