SK Chemicals develops flexible deco sheet using elastic material

By Park Hye-won, The Herald Business

SK Chemicals announced Tuesday that it has developed a new flexible deco sheet incorporating an elastic material, in collaboration with advanced materials company Toray Advanced Materials Korea.

The new product applies SK Chemicals' thermoplastic elastic material SKYPEL to its existing Story Film deco sheet, enhancing flexibility.

Conventional GAG PET film, widely used as a finishing material for furniture and interior applications, is prized for its high transparency, gloss and vivid color reproduction. SK Chemicals' new product builds on those qualities by incorporating SKYPEL, which offers superior heat resistance, mechanical strength, impact resistance and chemical resistance, allowing the sheet to adhere smoothly to curved and angular surfaces without lifting. The improvement enables flat and curved surfaces to be covered with a single material, ensuring design consistency across an entire space.

In developing the product, Toray Advanced Materials Korea applied its GAG film manufacturing technology using SKYPEL supplied by SK Chemicals, while Hansol HomeDeco used that film to produce the final product.

"This achievement combined the technological capabilities of each company along a value chain running from raw material to intermediate product to finished good, simultaneously raising both the performance and real-world applicability of the existing product," an SK Chemicals official said.

SK Chemicals plans to continue expanding the range of material applications through collaboration with specialized partners across various sectors.

Kim Eung-su, head of SK Chemicals' Green Materials Division, said the project "is a case in which applying material technology to an existing product led to tangible performance improvements," adding that the company will "continue to expand into diverse application areas together with customers, based on differentiated specialty materials."