From Nature, A New Future | Grand Launch of Suzhou Xiaoran's FURONA™ Fully Bio-based High-Performance Yarn

On August 26, the "From Nature, Defining the Future of Yarn with Inherent High Performance — FURONA™ Fully Bio-based High-Performance Yarn Launch Event," hosted by Suzhou Xiaoran New Materials Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Xiaoran"), was held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai). At the event, Suzhou Xiaoran New Materials officially launched FURONA™, a fully bio-based high-performance yarn, providing the fashion industry with a new material choice for sustainable transformation.

Zheng Junlin, Vice President of China Chemical Fibers Association; Li Deli, Deputy Chief Engineer; Tao Ran, Chairman of Xiaoran; Dr. Wang Lei, Chairman of Zhongke Guosheng (Hangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd.; Che Chaoxia, General Manager of Foshan Jingdu Textile Co., Ltd.; Zhu Jianjun, General Manager of Shanghai Molilin Textile Co., Ltd.; Tomohide Yamaguchi, Deputy General Manager of Japan Molilin Textile Co., Ltd.; and Zhong Pujun, Chairman of Suzhou Yuli Textile Technology Co., Ltd., together with other industry chain partners, attended the event and witnessed the debut of FURONA™ fully bio-based high-performance yarn.

FURONA™: Reshaping Sustainable Fashion with Inherent High Performance

At the launch event, Xiaoran Chairman Tao Ran officially released FURONA™ fully bio-based high-performance yarn. The product uses polyethylene furanoate (PEF) as its core raw material. Thanks to its unique oxygen-containing furan ring molecular structure, it delivers multiple natural functions without chemical additives, achieving a combination of environmental protection and high performance.

Tao Ran introduced that FURONA™ yarn has five main characteristics. First, it is 100% bio-based: the core raw material FDCA (2,5-furandicarboxylic acid) can be produced from non-food biomass, with 100% biobased carbon content, and producing one ton of PEF reduces carbon emissions by about 43.8% compared with conventional PET. Second, it offers natural antibacterial and anti-mite properties: its inhibition rates against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans reach up to 99%, and remain effective after 150 washes. Third, it provides moisture absorption and quick drying: its water absorption rate reaches 237%–257%, about twice the national standard, and the water droplet spreading time is less than one second. Fourth, it has inherent UV resistance: its UPF value reaches 228, about five times the national standard. The UV protection is inherent in the raw yarn, contains no additives, and remains effective after repeated washing. Fifth, it delivers wrinkle resistance, shape retention and high dye uptake: the rigid furan ring structure makes garments crisp and structured, wrinkle-resistant and easy to care for, while achieving higher color saturation and reducing dye and energy consumption under the same color depth. In addition, PEF fiber supports both mechanical and chemical closed-loop recycling routes and can directly enter existing PET recycling systems, truly achieving a green closed loop from plants to fibers and then to recycled material.

Integrated Layout: Bringing Good Products to Households

Founded in June 2017, Xiaoran is a core enterprise under Jiangsu Xiaoran Technology Co., Ltd. Since its establishment, the company has focused on recycled and differentiated fibers. It has introduced high-speed texturing machines from Barmag of Germany and TMT winding machines imported from Japan, specializing in differentiated fibers for footwear, home textiles, medical applications, automotive interiors and other textile fields. Its products mainly cover T8, T400, SPH, sea-island fiber, sheath-core yarn, dope-dyed yarn, and various porous fine-denier differentiated products. After ten years of market development, the company has built a broad customer base, won recognition from domestic and international customers, and achieved year-by-year sales growth.

At present, China's chemical fiber textile industry is at a critical stage of transformation toward green and low-carbon development. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the country has explicitly called for accelerating the development and application of high-performance, degradable bio-based materials, and is increasing the application of biomanufacturing in chemical fiber, textile and other fields. "Developing fully bio-based, high-functionality and high-performance fibers and products is timely. The FURONA™ fully bio-based high-performance yarn launched by Xiaoran is an important achievement in the industry's green innovation practice," said Zheng Junlin, Vice President of China Chemical Fibers Association. He expressed the hope that Xiaoran will continue to deepen its work in bio-based high-performance yarns, and that upstream and downstream partners will work together to fully leverage the fiber's excellent properties, jointly expand application scenarios for green yarns, bring more good yarns and products "from nature" into households, and inject more green momentum into the high-quality development of the chemical fiber textile industry.

Industry Chain Collaboration to Explore a New Future

The birth of FURONA™ is inseparable from the solid support of upstream bio-based raw material technology, as well as the collaborative progress of downstream spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing, and brand application across the entire chain. At the launch event, Dr. Wang Lei, Chairman of Zhongke Guosheng (Hangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd., shared the technology path of PEF raw materials from the laboratory to industrialization.

The core team of Zhongke Guosheng graduated from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The company has built a full-industry-chain technology system from upstream biomass raw materials and HMF (5-hydroxymethylfurfural) to downstream derivatives and end products. Its proprietary "SMART" catalytic system and revolutionary FDCA "short-process" technology enable crude HMF to be directly oxidized into polymer-grade FDCA, reducing overall costs by nearly 70% compared with traditional routes and successfully breaking through the "economic bottleneck" of bio-based materials. At present, Zhongke Guosheng's 400-ton production line at its Lishui base has maintained stable production for nearly three years, and a 10,000-ton commercial plant in Taixing is also under construction. Its product applications cover fibers, packaging, aramid and other diverse fields.

During the partner dialogue session, Tao Ran, Wang Lei, Che Chaoxia, Tomohide Yamaguchi and Zhong Pujun held in-depth discussions on "Collaborative Development of the PEF Industry Chain," and reviewed the technical pain points and solutions across the entire process of fully bio-based PEF yarn from raw material preparation, spinning and weaving to end garment application. The guests agreed that the successful mass production of FURONA™ yarn is a typical achievement of upstream and downstream collaborative innovation in the bio-based new materials field. It verifies the industrialization feasibility of domestically produced fully bio-based high-performance fibers and lays a foundation for downstream brands to launch more competitive sustainable products.

During the same period, Xiaoran New Materials held a strategic cooperation signing ceremony with four partners: Zhongke Guosheng, Jingdu Textile, Shanghai Molilin, and Suzhou Yuli. From raw materials to yarn and then to end applications, this fully bio-based material industry chain will truly move forward together, providing downstream brand customers with integrated solutions from material innovation to finished product delivery.

"The official launch of FURONA™ is an important step for Xiaoran New Materials in responding to the national 'dual carbon' strategy and positioning itself in the bio-based textile track. In the future, Xiaoran New Materials will continue to focus on technological innovation in bio-based textile materials, develop differentiated products for different end-use scenarios, further reduce product costs, enable more consumers to use environmentally friendly and high-performance fully bio-based textile products, allow the innovative achievements of green textiles to truly benefit the public, and empower a brand-new sustainable future for the textile industry with green materials from nature," Tao Ran said in a media interview.