BACKGROUND The cost of biomass feedstock represents a large portion of the total cost of bioethanol production. Therefore, it is necessary to find candidate materials as cheap feedstock for bioethanol production. Mangosteen pericarp waste (MPW) has potential as a feedstock for the production of bioethanol and other valuable chemicals. RESULTS We have developed a new method to efficiently convert MPW into bioethanol and other valuable products such as biosugar, alpha-mangostin and gamma-mangostin. The biosugar was obtained from in-house produced cellulase and pectinase at a 90% conversion rate; the biosugar was converted into bioethanol with 75% yield using separate hydrolysis and fermentation. In addition, the extraction of alpha-mangostin increased 1.46-fold after a combination of popping pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis. A copper-doped magnetic nanomatrix (Cu-MNM) was utilized to purify alpha-mangostin from MPW. We also obtained a good yield of gamma-mangostin via o-demethylation reaction of alpha-mangostin. CONCLUSION The value of MPW can be increased through reuse to produce bioethanol and other valuable active materials such as biosugar, alpha-mangostin and gamma-mangostin. We predict that economically beneficial processes could be developed from the reuse of these waste materials. (c) 2018 Society of Chemical Industry