sustainability | Bioplastics The limited opportunity to achieve a price premium
in mainstream polymer applications also leads Soare to question some of the more optimistic predictions for growth in bio-based PET. Partly renewable PET accounts for around 40% of bioplastics production today, according to European Bioplastics, which predicts production capacity will reach 4.6m tonnes by 2016. Soare, however, still sees the best short-term bioplastics growth potential in PLA, while predicting that new polymers such as PBS (polybutylene succinate) could become significant bioplastics players in the longer term. Polymers produced from waste CO2 are potential
Above and right: Brazil’s Braskem will add bio-based LDPE to its current bio-based HDPE and LLDPE products during next year
PE grades. The company’s director of marketing and sales, Patrick Zimmermann cited the example of a special PE blend it had developed for production of a container lid previously moulded in a flexible LDPE. The Terralene LL1101 compound is based on a blend
Right: The PLA-based Terraloy BP34001D
compound from Teknor Apex considerably raises HDT.
This test after 5 mins at 140˚C shows perfor- mance against
standard Ingeo PLA (top)
38
of a Braskem bio-based LLDPE grade, which is flexibilised with a combination of other polymers and non-migrating additives to match the melt flow, flexibility, low temperature performance and shrinkage values of the original LDPE grade. It offers a renewable content of 55%. One of the challenges for bioplastics producers today is pricing. “Some people may be able to achieve a premium, but broadly this industry will not tolerate it,” said Andrew Soare, senior analyst at US based Lux Research. And the pricing challenge is going to become even more difficult if shale gas has the much predicted negative impact on PE prices. Soare expects shale gas to make it a great deal more
difficult for bioplastics producers to compete at the commodity end of the polymer market, and especially against PE in the US. That will leave the bioplastics industry with two alternative options – to focus on higher performance applications and/or to look for lower cost feedstocks such as waste CO and CO2, he said.
INJECTION WORLD | July/August 2013
www.injectionworld.com
contenders for the future, and several companies are already active in this sector. Korean chemicals company SK Innovation is about to shift its GreenPol technology for catalytic production of PPC (polypropylene carbonate)
from CO2 from continuous pilot scale to commercial scale. Senior researcher Sung-ik Kim said blends of PPC with petrochemically-derived polymers such as PBAT (polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate) or bio-based PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates) have already yielded products suitable for injection moulding applications. l AMI’s Bioplastics Compounding and Processing conference took place in Miami in May. For more information about the event, contact Stephanie Berchem;
sb@amiplastics-na.com.
Click on the links for more information: ❙
http://en.european-bioplastics.org ❙
http://bit.ly/1aH6HfI (Argo Group) ❙
www.natureworksllc.com ❙
www.teknorapex.com ❙
www.purac.com ❙
www.braskem.com.br ❙
www.fkur.com ❙
www.luxresearchinc.com ❙
www.sk.com
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