FKuR plastics – made by nature! ® Bio-Flex ® multilayers – engineered to clarity! Recycled napkins from Metsä wrapped in compostable multilayer made from Bio-Flex ® A 4100 CL / F 2110 / A 4100 CL produced by Kobusch & Sengewald. FKuR Kunststoff GmbH Siemensring 79 D - 47877 Willich Phone: +49 2154 92 51-0 Fax: +49 2154 92 51-51 sales@fkur.com www.fkur.com FKuR Plastics Corp. 921 W New Hope Drive | Building 605 Cedar Park, TX 78613 | USA Phone: +1 512 986 8478 Fax: +1 512 986 5346 sales.usa@fkur.com
Editorial dear readers I’m sure that many of you (just like me …) did not know (or perhaps you did know!) that the first plastics materials in history were bioplastics. I stumbled over this piece of information when I started researching the background for a book project that I am currently working on. Obviously the first plastic resins were developed to substitute materials which were becoming scarce and expensive - materials such as ivory, tortoiseshell, or mother-of-pearl. Hence celluloid was developed following a ,000 competition for the creation of a billiard ball material to replace ivory in 1863. Another example is galalith, made from casein, a protein commonly found in mammalian milk. And there were quite a number of other plastics made from crops and animal products. All of that began in the mid- 19th century. And it was only due to the massive availability of petroleum and the invention of new materials in the 20 th century that the boom in oil based plastics was triggered and bioplastics fell into oblivion … Well that was just daydreaming… One of the highlights in this issue is the subject of bottles, or — more generally — the blow moulding of bottles and containers, including the materials needed. PLA bottles were a hot topic during the last few years, but these days our attention is more attracted by the large soft-drink companies announcing the use of partly, or even 100%, biobased PET for beverage bottles. One component to make PET, the monoethylene glycol based on sugar cane, had already been introduced a while ago. But now there seem to be ways to produce, economically and thus commercially, terephthalic acid from renewable resources. Read more details in this issue. Nevertheless, PLA is still, and will be even more, a very attractive material for a multitude of applications. Research and development to improve heat resistance and other properties using different approaches continues apace. The areas of application grow every day. This is why bioplastics MAGAZINE, after our first successful PLA World Congress in 2008, will now organize the 2 nd PLA World Congress. In May of 2012, we invite all who are interested in PLA to come to Munich in Germany. And right now we invite all those involved in the aforementioned developments to submit proposals for presentations in our ‘Call for Papers’ (see page 11). The team at bioplastics MAGAZINE is looking forward to welcoming you to Munich next spring. Until then we hope you enjoy reading bioplastics MAGAZINE Sincerely yours Michael Thielen Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/bioplasticsmag Be our friend on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/bioplastics-MAGAZINE/103745406344904 bioplastics MAGAZINE [04/11] Vol. 6 3
