Japanese textile manufacturers are strengthening their collaborations with domestic production areas, such as Hokuriku, and distributing their attractive textiles around the world.

Having the largest production scale in Japan, and manufacturing yarn and textiles abroad as well, primarily in other parts of Asia, Toray regards its plants in Japan as the “mother factory” where it continues to research, develop and produce yarn, and create competitive raw materials in collaboration with companies in the production area.

The textile it began selling in spring/summer 2016, using ultrafine polyester, UTS50+, is a high-sensitivity, high-functionality material. It provides a combination of features, including the soft texture of an ultrafine fabric, a simple touch, a matte feel, ultraviolet screening, anti-transparency, and heat insulation.

Toray is strengthening joint efforts with the Hokuriku production areas

Each individual thread has a diameter of just 5 microns (around one twentieth the width of a human hair), and incorporates ceramics at a rate that far exceeds the range of 1.5% to 3% of traditional full-dull yarn. This has been achieved through the combination of textile processing techniques and the sea-island composite spinning technology for which it is well-known. The textile will be rolled out to a wide range of markets in Japan and overseas.

Toray also formed the Toray Synthetic Textile Cluster in 2004 with companies in the production area, and has been strengthening its collaboration with companies involved in every process, including cultivating raw yarn, yarn processing, weaving, knitting and dyeing. This collaboration is not an extension of Toray’s traditional business of placing orders with production area companies; rather the cluster itself is the central player, and its aim is to create functionality that transcends the boundaries of the company, in the form of a “virtual company.”

While supporting the cluster activities, Toray is leveraging technical collaboration with the participant companies as a means to develop new textiles, and by exhibiting these textiles at Milano Unica and other efforts, the company hopes to achieve steady business results.