Teijin Fibers Limited, the core company of the Teijin Group’s polyester fibres business, announced today that it will begin full production and marketing of a new plant-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibre in April 2012.

Named Eco Circle PlantFiber, the new product, also available as a textile fabric, will become Teijin Fibers’ core biomaterial for applications ranging from apparel, car seats and interiors to personal hygiene products. Teijin Fibers expects to sell 30,000 tons of Eco Circle PlantFiber products in the initial fiscal year ending in March 2013, and 70,000 tons by the third year of business.

According to Teijin, Eco Circle PlantFiber is made roughly 30% from bio fuels derived from biomass such as sugarcane. “Conventional PET typically is made by polymerizing ethylene glycol (EG) and dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) or telephthalic acid (PTA), with EG accounting for roughly 30%. The EG contained in Eco Circle PlantFiber is bio-derived rather than oil-derived, so it helps to conserve fossil resources and lower greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, Eco Circle PlantFiber has the same characteristics and quality of oil-derived PET, so it is suitable for use in many polyester products,” the company said in a statement today.

Eco Circle PlantFiber also can be recycled using Teijin Fibers’ Eco Circle closed-loop polyester recycling system. Polyester is chemically decomposed at the molecular level by the system and then recycled as new DMT that offers purity and quality comparable to material derived directly from petroleum, Teijin says.