news AdM pulls out of bioplastics…
Agricultural products group Archer daniels Midland (AdM) is withdrawing from its loss- making bioplastics alliance with Metabolix saying it does not believe it can deliver sufficient financial results. the two firms formed telles
in 2006 to commercialise Mirel PHA polymers. the company will be dissolved on 8 February and AdM said it will end Mirel production. “Unfortunately, uncertainty
around projected capital and production costs, combined with the rate of market adoption, led to projected financial returns for AdM that are too uncertain. therefore, we have decided to exit the business as permitted by the commercial alliance agree- ment with Metabolix,” said Mark Bemis, president for corn at AdM. All Metabolix technology that was used in the joint
Telles promoted Mirel for a variety of applications
AdM Polymer has been
producing Mirel at AdM’s integrated corn processing complex facility in clinton, iowa. there are currently approximately 90 full-time AdM Polymer employees at the plant. Under the terms of their commercial alliance, it may provide PHA fermentation services for Metabolix during a three-year period following termination. AdM is not the first major
venture, including intellectual property rights, will revert to Metabolix. richard eno, ceo of Metabolix, said the move was “a setback”. He added the company remained committed to commercialising PHA and is undertaking a strategic review. According to the most
recent Metabolix financial
report for the third quarter of 2011, telles had a total of 57 customers with just 26 placing repeat orders. For the three months to the end of Septem- ber 2011, Metabolix made a net loss of $29.2 million. it had a total revenue for the period of $986,000, with more than half of this coming from grants.
company to withdraw from a bioplastics alliance. dow pulled out of its natureworks PlA joint venture with cargill in 2005. two years later, teijin stepped in as 50:50 partner in natureworks but it also withdrew from the jV in 2009. thailand’s Ptt chemical bought a share of nature- works in october last year to form a 50:50 jV with cargill. ❙
www.adm.com ❙
www.metabolix.com
…but coca-cola invests more
coca-cola has announced three investments with plant- based chemical development groups aimed at supporting its moves to source 100% bio- based resins for its PlantBottle programme. the company has signed
development agreements with Virent, Gevo and Avantium. Virent is developing catalytic chemistry to convert plant sugars to chemicals such as parazylene, Gevo is working on new fermentation technologies for production of isobutanol, while Avantium is developing technology for production of
10 injection world | january/February 2012
furanic polymer building blocks from biomass. “while the technology to
make bio-based materials in a lab has been available for years, we believe Virent, Gevo and Avantium are companies that possess technologies that have high potential for creating them on a global commercial scale,” said rick Frazier, vice president, commercial product supply at coca-cola company. “this is a significant r&d
investment in packaging innovation and is the next step toward our vision of creating all of our plastic packaging from
responsibly sourced plant- based materials,” he said. coca-cola’s first generation PlantBottle Pet packaging was introduced in 2009 and the company claims to have made more than 10bn packages to date. At present, the company uses bio-derived mono- ethylene glycol in the resin but the purified terphthlic acid – which makes up 70% of the content – is derived conven- tionally. it wants to replace this with a plant-based alternative. ❙
www.virent.com ❙
www.gevo.com ❙
www.avantium.com
www.injectionworld.com
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