Daily News

Braskem (São Paulo, Brazil), the global leader in biobased polymer production, has joined the Renewable Carbon Initiative as part of its commitment to achieving carbon neutrality.

Dow (Midland, MI, United States) and LVMH Beauty, a division of LVMH (Paris, France), the world leader in luxury and home to 75 iconic brands, will collaborate to accelerate the use of sustainable packaging across LVMH’s perfume and cosmetic products.

Avantium (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), a leading technology company in renewable chemistry, and Henkel (Düsseldorf, Germany), a global leader of adhesives, sealants, and functional coatings, and leading manufacturer of well-known consumer brands, have signed an offtake agreement for five years, under which Avantium will supply Henkel with FDCA (furandicarboxylic acid) produced in Avantium’s FDCA Flagship Plant, currently under construction in Delfzijl, the Netherlands.

UBQ Materials (Tel Aviv, Israel), climate tech developer of advanced materials made from organic and unrecyclable waste, recently announced that Rimax (Yumbo, Colombia) has launched the first consumer pet line “Made with UBQ™”, which will initially be available in Colombia and then roll-out globally.

Environmental commitment is one of the hottest topics for 2023. Hyundai Motor Group and Hyundai America Technical Center showcased their respective activities at the Hyundai Open Innovation Lounge in Seoul, Korea. The Palisade concept vehicle features Lingrove’s innovative, high-performance, plant-based ekoa® for a luxury and interactive finish in the interior of the car.

On January 4, 2023, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company unveiled a demonstration tire comprised of 90% sustainable materials. This demonstration tire has passed all applicable regulatory testing as well as Goodyear’s internal testing.

Wood, the global consulting and engineering company, will work with CuanTec Ltd., a Scottish circular economy business, to develop cutting edge separation facilities that will process shellfish waste to extract chitin, a naturally occurring, 100% compostable biopolymer with a wide range of applications in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food industries.

Today, Fashion for Good (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) launches the Home-Compostable Polybag Project, a pilot to test alternatives to conventional single-use polybags. Orchestrated by Fashion for Good in partnership with C&A (Vilvoorde, Belgium) and Levi Strauss & Co. (San Francisco, CA, USA), this six-month project uses novel bags from Fashion for Good innovators TIPA Corp. (Hod HaSharon, Israel) and Greenhope (West Jakarta, Indonesia).

The Hamburg-based start-up traceless materials (Germany) has developed hooks made from their material innovation traceless®. During a pilot phase over the upcoming months, fashion retailer C&A (Vilvoorde, Belgium) uses the traceless® hooks as a replacement for conventional plastic hooks in its store in Hamburg Altona.

European Bioplastics presented at the 17th EUBP Conference (6+7 Dec. 2022, Berlin, Germany) a positive outlook for the global bioplastics industry. After a stagnation of the overall plastics production in 2020, mainly due to challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, there is now a new momentum for global bioplastics production.

Researchers from Biorizon (Bergen op Zoom, the Netherlands) co-initiator VITO (Mol, Belgium) and chemical company Kaneka Belgium (Westerlo) joined forces to conduct research to create a lignin-based polymer that outperformed its fossil-based counterpart in terms of thermal stability and UV-blocking properties.

Biowert (Brensbach, Germany) processes grass from the Odenwald (Germany) into biogas, fertilizer, and an extremely robust plastic. The company is thus a pioneer in the circular economy – and has know-how that is in demand nationwide.

Incorporating sustainability and provenance into branding has been key to changes being made at luxury drinking chocolate manufacturer Cocoa Canopy (Weybridge, UK), with the help of compostable packaging provider Futamura (Wigton, UK).

Heartland (Detroit, MI, USA) has completed its Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine the carbon footprint of Imperium Filler from cradle to gate. This research shows that every 1 kg of Imperium Filler removes 3 kg of CO2e.

Something not deemed possible has become a reality: fully biobased and biodegradable glass fibre reinforced compounds.

The launch of a new bioplastics pilot plant in the Flanders region in Belgium will enable a new bioplastics production technology, ready for implementation at industrial scale.

Avantium (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), a leading technology company in renewable chemistry, has published Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data for its plantMPG™ (plant-based mono-propylene glycol) from its Ray Technology™: a chemical intermediate used in a variety of applications including in functional fluids and unsaturated polyester resins.

K 2022 visitors can look forward to new Clariant (Muttenz, Switzerland) additive solutions to progress more sustainable plastics and reduce resource use.

During the K’2022 Novamont (Novara, Italy) launched the first stick pack for a powdered multivitamin and multimineral supplement made of a paper laminate and Mater-Bi bioplastic film which is compostable and recyclable together with household food waste.

PADM Medical (Winnipeg, MB, Canada) PRECISION ECO™ plant-based procedural mask with ear loops receives emergency use authorization (EUA) from the US FDA – It is the world's first plant based procedural mask to receive EUA for use in medical and healthcare settings.

Bioplastics can be a broad and at times confusing term as it describes both what they are (biobased) and what they do (biodegrade), while not necessarily doing/being both.

Rosenberger Optical Solutions & Infrastructure (Augsburg, Germany), an expert in fibre optic connections, cabling solutions, and infrastructure services, announces that its in-house plastic packaging for patch cords will be switched to biobased and biodegradable polymers in the coming year.

The Helsingborg-based greentech company GAIA BioMaterials AB (GAIA) has a world first ready just in time for the opening of Scanpack (October 4th), the largest packaging exhibition in northern Europe. After a long and challenging development process GAIA has finally cracked the code for a thermoformable version of their biomaterial Biodolomer®, that not only can withstand microwave heat, but also has the potential for passing the home composting requirements. The solution is to be found in a combination of the proprietary recipe, as well as the new, unique production equipment, which the company installed in its factory in Helsingborg during last year.

Neste, Idemitsu Kosan, CHIMEI and Mitsubishi Corporation have agreed to build a renewable plastics supply chain utilizing bio-based hydrocarbons (Neste RE™) for the production of styrene monomer (i.e. bio-SM), and its mass balanced renewable plastics derivatives including acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (i.e. bio-ABS*). The bio-SM production in Japan and the renewable plastics production in Taiwan will mark the first of such production in each country, and they are planned to take place in the first half of 2023.

Palsgaard (Juelsminde, Denmark), a leader in plant-based additives for the plastics industry, has announced that its Einar® 611 biobased anti-fog surfactant has been successfully specified by a major Korean supplier of food-grade polyethylene (PE) film solutions.

Plastic pollution is a problem that begins long before it reaches the environment, and so must be the solution. To this aim, the RevoluZion project will develop innovative biobased bioplastic material formulations using advanced enzyme engineering techniques.

This technology synergizes with recently developed proprietary bio-polymer technologies and provides a commercially referenced production of biobased succinic acid (bio-SAc) that serves as feedstock for the production of polybutylene succinate (PBS).

As a result of new research involving a cutting-edge facility at Montana State University (Bozeman, USA), agricultural biomass that would otherwise sit in farmers’ fields could instead be turned into plastic beverage bottles and food containers.

Our oceans have become the world's largest landfill, accumulating more than 13 million tonnes of plastic annually, according to Bioplastics International1 (Scottsdale, USA), an Arizona-based producer of the world's first sugar cane alcohol water soluble PVA (Polyvinyl Alcohol) as well as many bio resins from plant starches.

Orthex (Espoo, Finland), a leading Nordic producer of household products, has selected a range of INEOS Styrolution’s sustainable Luran® ECO raw materials for its range of SmartStoreTM Compact storage products.