Takeda Furukawa Successfully Develops Elastic Polyester Yarn

On April 6, Teijin Frontier Co., Ltd. announced that it has successfully developed a new type of elastic polyester yarn, offering a more comfortable 100% polyester fabric option for sport and outdoor apparel. This new elastic polyester yarn, when combined with high-performance polyester materials, can be made into 100% polyester textiles, making recycling simpler. Additionally, thanks to the company's proprietary polymer design and spinning technology, the yarn exhibits excellent elasticity.

This innovation enables high-performance polyester materials to retain their advanced functionality and superior texture while adding excellent stretch and recovery properties. In recent years, with growing demand for comfort in sportswear, outdoor apparel, and everyday clothing, polyurethane-based elastic fibers have been widely adopted to enhance garment wearability. However, significant differences in properties—such as heat setting—between polyurethane elastic fibers and polyester have led to incompatibility, limiting product development. The newly developed polyester yarn effectively resolves this compatibility challenge, opening up new possibilities for developing fully polyester fabrics that combine comfort, elasticity, and high performance.

Unlike elasticity that relies on yarn structure—such as composite yarns made by combining polymers with different thermal shrinkage properties or highly crimped yarns—the elasticity of this new type of polyester yarn comes from its unique polymer design and spinning control technology. Therefore, although it is a polyester filament, it has a soft stretching performance and excellent dimensional stability, with its high resilience comparable to that of polyurethane elastic fibers.

Teijin Frontier plans to apply this new yarn to various apparel textiles, including sportswear, casual wear, and underwear. Starting in 2027, the company will sell these textiles to domestic and overseas outdoor and sportswear markets in Japan, targeting annual sales of 100,000 meters in fiscal 2027 and 500,000 meters in fiscal 2029.