Kolon Industries (120110.KS) said on the 26th that it won the IR52 Jang Young-shil Award for its eco-friendly, high-performance spunbond.
The IR52 Jang Young-shil Award, hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), is considered Korea's most prestigious industrial technology prize. Since 1991, it has recognized new-technology products and research organizations with outstanding technological innovation.
The award ceremony was held on the 25th at the Peace & Park Convention in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, attended by key executives and employees who led the spunbond development, including Kolon Industries Executive Director Choi Hyun-jun, research team leader Lee Min-ho and production team leader Choi Yang-ho.
Spunbond is a polyester long-fiber nonwoven fabric that stably maintains the shape of textile products. It is used mainly in filters, automotive carpets and seat reinforcements, and drainage materials for construction.
The high-performance spunbond developed in-house by Kolon Industries offers world-class durability, maintaining equal strength in both the horizontal and vertical directions while keeping uniform spacing between fibers. It also shows little deformation under abrupt changes in temperature and humidity and has excellent processability, allowing it to be easily molded into complex shapes. The company localized spunbond technology — previously held by only a few global chemical companies — through its own research and development (R&D) capabilities.
The company also added eco-friendliness. Kolon Industries succeeded in developing a high-performance spunbond made entirely from recycled materials. Recycled materials are difficult to apply to high-performance spunbond, which requires uniform quality, because of their wide quality variation and the difficulty of managing impurities. The company overcame these limitations through R&D, securing both material properties and eco-friendliness at the same time. It also expects that using recycled materials can cut carbon emissions generated in the production process by up to 43% compared with the existing process.
Through this spunbond development and commercialization, Kolon Industries has strengthened its foundation for technological self-reliance and reinforced its independent competitiveness in high-performance nonwoven fabrics, a field that had relied heavily on foreign technology. Building on the award, the company plans to accelerate its push into the global market with products that offer both eco-friendliness and high performance.
"This IR52 Jang Young-shil Award recognizes the high-performance materials technology and eco-friendly innovation capabilities that Kolon Industries has accumulated," Kolon Industries President Heo Sung said. "We will continue to enhance our industrial competitiveness through the development of differentiated materials and to secure future growth engines."
Meanwhile, Kolon Industries is expanding its portfolio of eco-friendly technology products to strengthen its environmental, social and governance (ESG) management. A representative example is KOCETAL ECO-E, an eco-friendly polyacetal (POM) product that marks the world's first application of low-carbon engineering plastics for medical use. ECO-E is produced with renewable-energy-based e-methanol instead of fossil-fuel-based methanol, retaining the excellent material properties and processability of POM while also achieving carbon reduction.
