Green shoots

7 March 2013



Growing awareness among brand-owners towards the commercial opportunities represented by the ‘green premium’ means that the fledgling bioplastics industry is at last starting to take off, as Sam Cole reports


Bioplastics have been around longer than might be popularly supposed; indeed BASF produced a castor oil-based engineering polymer over 50 years ago, registered little or no interest in it and so shelved it until 2007, when it reappeared as part of the company's developing bioplastics solutions portfolio.

The French chemicals company Arkema first conducted similar trials with a castor-oil based plastics substitute during the 1940s, the successor to which, Rilsan, is used today as a high temperature thermoplastics replacement for metal parts in automotive engineering. One of the first commercial launches of a PLA-based application was by Purac in the early 1980s in the biomedical market: which gained success through its resorbability within the human body.

The adoption of biopolymers within the packaging sector, however, has been largely held back by the hitherto ready availability of oil-based plastics.

Uncertainties over the reliability of biopolymers to meet the exacting quality and performance standards required within the increasingly regulated food, pharmaceuticals and personal care sectors have also played a part - although these unconnected obstacles are now largely being overcome.

And while the price differential between less expensive conventional PE and its bio-equivalent can be as much as 20%, the 'green premium' gap is narrowing and will continue to do so as oil supplies decline and greater acreages of renewable feedstock are planted and harvested.

Arguably, 100 years hence it's quite possible that oil will be referenced as having been a transient commodity in the derivation of energy. In the interim, of course, it is still the original source of 99% of the global plastics packaging market, currently valued at around €500 billion.

The bioplastics divide
While still combined in direct competition with conventional plastics, the two generic types of biopolymer - bio-based and biodegradable - are increasingly targeting separate applications. Hitherto, the annual 1.16 million tonnes market has been weighted in favour of the bio-equivalents to oil-based PE, PP and PET (the so-called renewable and recyclable 'drop-ins' produced from crops such as cane sugar), as opposed to compostable grades of polyester, regenerated cellulose, most notably corn-starch or sugar-derived polylactic acid (PLA).

However, forward predictions indicate that by 2016, while the biopolymer market will have expanded five-fold to reach 5.78 million tonnes, the percentage ratio of adoption will be 86:14 in favour of bio-based grades (European Bioplastics/IfBB). Thus, while usage of PLA will have increased by 56% to around 289,000 tonnes/year, its market share will have declined from 16% to around 5%.

Meanwhile, the market is realigning its production geographically as well as generically. While R&D is a continuing process in both Europe and North America, according to European Bioplastics the establishment of new production capacities is more likely to be centred upon South America and Asia.

Output figures for 2011 show that Asia had the most bioplastics production capacity with 34.6%, compared with South America (32.8%); Europe (18.5%); North America (13.7%) and Australia (0.4%). Projecting forward to 2016, however, while the vast proportion of total production will be shared between Asia (46.3%) and South America (45.1%), output from those other territories will have shrunk "alarmingly" to 4.9%; 3.5% and 0.2% respectively.

Outgoing chairman of the European Bioplastics association Andy Sweetman (also, Innovia Films business development & sustainability manager) is naturally concerned at the prospect of Europe losing ground in being positioned to shape the industry's future direction.

"Although we're hearing many general sup¬portive statements at EU level and in the Member States there is a lack of concrete measures," he says. "If Europe wants to profit from growth at all levels of the value chain in our industry, the correspon¬ding decisions need to be made."

There are two obvious reasons for the growing pre-eminence of renewable bio-based plastics: the vested interest of petrochemicals companies to maintain their hold over the supply chain; and the relative ease with which a drop-in substitute can be fed through the existing waste recovery stream without incurring any processing adaptation or on-cost.

The largest producer of thermoplastic resins throughout the Americas and the eighth largest worldwide, the $24 billion turnover Brazilian-based Braskem will be complementing its existing 200,000 tonnes bio-PE capacity with a further 50,000 tonnes of bio-based PP later this year.

Balanced view
These volumes are dwarfed by Braskem's conventional resins output; an imbalance that's inevitably reflected in a higher price differential. That will stabilise as production levels increase, but in the meantime their impact on the pricing of the end-product isn't necessarily any cause for concern, says the manufacturer's renewable chemicals commercial officer, Fabio Carneiro. "Consumers are already deliberately going for the green option in at least 1% of all of their purchasing decisions irrespective of the higher cost," he says.

"So if you look at bio-based packaging, even if the cost of material is twice as much, it'll only add a few cents onto the purchase price of the final product. It's not much different from opting for a premium brand over an own-label alternative.'

Braskem's 'green PE' is exclusively distributed across Europe by Germany-based FKuR, which additionally offers customised bio-PE compounds under the Terralene brand name for injection moulded and film applications. The latest high profile brand to switch to this more overtly sustainable solution is French personal care & cosmetics producer L'Occitane, who specified green PE for its Bonne Mère range last year and actively promotes the fact on its labelling. Meanwhile, FKuR is currently looking to extend Terralene's reach into stand-up pouches.

Other majors including Dow and Mitsui & Co (in a proposed joint venture scheduled for 2016); BASF, Mitsubishi Chemical and Solvay also have well advanced bio-based production strategies.

Meanwhile, spearheading the focus upon bio-PET - which is predicted to account for 80% of the global bioplastics market by 2016 (European Bioplastics/IfBB) - are Coca-Cola and Heinz, both of which are stepping up the replacement of conventional polymer with the PlantBottle solution that currently incorporates 30% MEG (monoethylene glycol).

Indeed, Heinz is aiming to achieve a 75% renewability rating across all of its packaging materials by the end of this year.

Since first switching to PlantBottle in 2009, Coca-Cola reckons to have sold more than 10 billion units worldwide. The brand's intentions of further extending its sustainable footprint have recently been confirmed by its commitment to a new 500,000 tonnes/year capacity plant due to come on stream near to São Paulo in 2014.

A new player
Despite falling behind in terms of market share, there is still plenty of scope for positive development in the biodegradables sector, however, not least with regard to PLA. Up until now the market has been largely dominated by the US-based NatureWorks, which is planning to double its existing 140,000 tonnes capacity within the next five years through an extension into Asia-Pacific as part of a joint venture with the PTT petrochemicals company.

Given the predicted overall size of the PLA market however, those expansion plans could be seriously challenged by the decision of Netherlands-based Purac to expand its existing 80,000 tonnes polylactide capacity by targeting new applications within the the food service sector not least its introduction of an enhanced heat-resistant biodegradable disposable beaker made out of PLLA/PDLA said to be capable of withstanding temperatures up to 100ºC - two times higher than standard PLA's top limit.

Market forces
While Purac has for the past three years been producing the additional D and L lactides needed to enhance the performance capabilities of standard PLA, it has only just perfected the polymerisation in conjunction with the Swiss-based Sulzer engineering specialist.

A thicker-wall version of the same formulation is already on the market as a replacement for a microwavable carton, confirms Purac VP bioplastics Jeroen Jonker. "Although the material is a little bit more expensive than PS, the final product isn't," he says.
"Its inherent stiffness is greater, so the construction can be a bit thinner, and as there's no adaptation required for the downstream process it's price-competitive."

Purac's lactide is currently produced at two locations, says Jonker: a 5,000-tonne capacity plant near Barcelona, and a larger 75,000-tonne site in Thailand.

"But we envisage that once there's sufficient interest in making the switch to PLA, there are individual customers that might easily require 70,000 tonnes to themselves alone," he says. "So the likelihood is that the location of new production will be determined to a large extent by wherever the market takes us."

Different source material
Demonstrating that ethanol - and subsequently therefore a bio-based plastics solution - can be derived from just about any feedstock imaginable, Eastern BioPlastics has developed a ready to use resin that combines conventional PP with waste recovered chicken feathers.


Introduced last year, properties of this fibre reinforced composite material are said to be close to virgin PP with low specific gravity of 0.9g/cc for the 30% fibre filled grade (up to 40% using rPP).


Around 20% of a total global availability in excess of 6 million tonnes of chicken feathers/year ends up in European landfill alone, according to Eastern BioPlastics CEO Sonny Meyerhoeffer: "We have spent the past four years developing the technology to turn waste chicken feathers into a truly sustainable material that does not interfere with the food chain," he says.

"Added to PP we have achieved a resin with a low carbon footprint and that is totally bio-based and GM free."

The bio-resin is being distributed by UK-based A&O FilmPAC. Sales manager John Bray says: "We're aiming to produce around 8,000 tonnes in the first year. Pricing is at a premium to conventional PP, although much less expensive than most current bio-solutions, due to the scale and distribution, but the plan is to start local licensed production in Europe and obtain price parity within 18 months."

According to the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, peat fibre has the potential to be another source for the production of biodegradable packaging solutions, and the organisation has already confirmed the development of materials containing thermoplastics and panel-form peat fibre, as well as fibre-suitable
pre-processing methods.

 



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