Corn has become an important raw material for biodegradable packaging

Recently, Harald, chairman of the International Biodegradable Polymer Association and Working Group (IBAW) headquartered in Berlin, Germany, reported that as more producers obtain biodegradable packaging plastics from crops and other plants, Corn has become an important source of raw materials for this packaging.

In the past few years, packaging providers have obtained a wide variety of biodegradable packaging plastics from a variety of plants, primarily corn. With increasing calls for environmental protection, the demand for such recyclable plastics is also increasing. Some companies predict that this increase in demand will be about 20% a year. Due to the continuous improvement of the functions of bioplastics and the increasing market demand, the interest of enterprises in this work has increased.

In the past, biodegradable plastics based on plant raw materials were 30% to 80% more expensive than petroleum traditional packaging plastics, so the development of biodegradable plastics was affected by price competition. In 2005, sugar and starch became less expensive raw materials than oil, and Harald believes that biodegradable plastics are promising in the long run with improved production processes and future cost competition. At present, there are more and more manufacturers of biodegradable plastics in the world, and the broad prospects will encourage companies to develop this field. In some important respects, the development of technology has brought biodegradable plastics to the level of conventional plastics traditionally made from petroleum. The new trend is to combine biodegradable plastics with other biomaterials, thereby adding new functional properties and providing special properties. Other developments have focused on multilayer films, which have expanded the use of packaging materials by changing characteristics, such as improving the fencing of packaging plastics.

Harald believes that today's bio-plastics industry is also facing great risks, because the bio-plastic industry is still facing a small market environment, experts estimate that bio-plastic currently has the ability to seize Europe (the existing plastic materials market (about 40 million tons) 10%, which includes the packaging market for food packaging and other consumer goods.In order to take up more share, billions of euros of input is necessary, especially for the construction of large production plants.Another element is for this field. Legislation support, compared with support for energy renewal and biofuels, has relatively little support for updating raw materials.To promote this technology, Germany's packaging order for biological packaging issued in Germany in May 2005 was the first measure. .

According to Harald, the development of the bioplastics industry is a frontier area that will extend over the next decade to industries that rely on petroleum as a feedstock. In the past few years, many major packaging companies have launched biodegradable products, such as Amcor's use of biotechnology to develop a biodegradable, soft and plastic packaging for candy. The other is a division of Naturework, a Cargill company, whose main action is to produce biodegradable packaging by introducing polylactic acid (PLA, a polymer from corn). Others are Denmark's Danisco, which announced that they will use hardened castor oil and acetic acid this year to produce a plastic that is colorless, odorless, and fully biodegradable. Another entry into the biodegradable packaging market is the UK's Stanelco, which markets Starpo 12000, a natural biodegradable food package made from starch.

Germany's BASF also announced that they will introduce biodegradable plastics that are made from renewable raw materials at an acceptable price. They believe that the demand for packaging that is beneficial to the environment will increase, and the company's Ecovio material is made of 45% polylactic acid. BASF's existing biodegradable plastic Ecoflex is derived from petrochemical products. BASF predicts that the annual growth of bio-blockable plastics in the world market will reach more than 20%.

Naturallylowa in the United States has used polylactic acid as a packaging for organic milk. In addition, some retail companies in Belgium and France have tried polylactic acid for various food packaging.

Source: Youyin