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News daily upated news at www.bioplasticsmagazine.com New joint venture Carbiolice for bio-sourced and biodegradable plastic films From 1 January 2017 onwards, via its Energy Transition and Green Growth Law, France will enforce the use of bio-sourced and biodegradable plastics for fruit & vegetable bags (35,000 tons per year) and other films. The joint venture Carbiolice shall address this challenge in the long term by continuing to develop biolice by Limagrain Céréales Ingrédients (Riom, France) and industrialising technological innovation licenced by Carbios (Saint-Beauzire, France). Carbiolice is the product of a partnership between Carbios’ innovative technology and Limagrain’s technical, industrial and commercial expertise acquired over more than 15 years in the bioplastics sector. Carbios is providing major innovation with its enzymatic technology. Limagrain Céréales Ingrédients is providing its expertise and existing production capacity for bioplastic granules, known under the brand name biolice. The SPI “Industrial Projects Company” investment fund, financed by the PIA Future Investments Programme and run by Bpifrance, will round off the financial partnership to support the expansion of industrial production. The future company shall take over Limagrain Céréales Ingrédients’ bioplastics activity and progressively integrate the technological innovations licenced by Carbios over time. The granules will be used to produce bio-sourced and biodegradable plastic films for a variety of applications including green waste collection bags, mulch films, fruit & vegetable bags, industrial films and even mailing films. Theses biodegradable plastics will meet the increasingly stringent requirements defined by France’s energy transition law. The future company will, in the long term, create 50 direct jobs and support one of the first green chemistry technologies currently under development and to be deployed on an industrial scale in France. The contributions from industrial assets and licences result in a project total of EUR 29.5 million. The SPI fund will invest EUR 11 million over this period to ultimately reach a 37 % shareholding in Carbiolice. These investments will help to ensure activity growth by progressively acquiring additional industrial capacity. They will also help to support the industrial and commercial development of the new plastic materials derived from Carbios technology. MT www.lci.limagrain.com | www.carbios.fr Novamont and Barbier Group to develop new home compostable bag for fruits and vegetables Italian bioplastics firm Novamont and French leading producer of plastic films Barbier Group announced today they have signed a partnership aimed at the development of a new kind of bioplastic lightweight bag for fruits and vegetables. The new bag, to be marketed under the name Ma-Ter-Bio (the bag for planet Earth), will offer a more sustainable alternative to traditional non-biodegradable and non-compostable plastic packaging. As required under French law, the new bag is plant based, suitable for home composting and obtained from locally sourced starch and sunflower oil. Ma-Ter-Bio is made with at least 35 %, up to over 50 %, renewable content from biomass. The Barbier Group is the leading French producer of plastic films, and ranks as the sixth largest in Europe. The company sells polyethylene sheeting for agriculture and industry, as well as bags for the supermarket sector (for vegetables and fruits, waste collection, with soft handles). The Group has been developing products from both recycled and biodegradable/compostable materials for over 15 years. All its products are covered by the trademark “Guaranteed French Origin”. Novamont is the pioneer company in the sector of biodegradable and compostable bioplastics from renewable sources. Founded in 1989, it built its growth on the principles of the circular bioeconomy and the production of bioplastic materials that formed an alternative to traditional plastics from fossil sources. The Italybased bioplastics manufacturer of the Mater-Bi line of bioplastics is a global leader in this field, with an annual production capacity of 150,000 tons. With marked prescience, Novamont opened its French subsidiary in 2006 to follow the developments relating to the new energy transition law more closely, as well as to monitor the local market as a whole. This has led to the signing of a partnership agreement with a French company, thus laying the basis for the supply of locally sourced materials. According to Novamont, this is a first step towards the creation of a production site on French soil. KL www.novamont.com 6 bioplastics MAGAZINE [04/16] Vol. 11
News Biobased glycol S2G BioChemicals Inc., a Vancouver, (Canada) based developer of sustainable chemical conversion technologies, has announced in mid June that the Company has successfully initiated commercial production of fossil-free, bio-based glycols at the Memphis (Tennessee, USA) site of the Company’s operating partner, Pennakem LLC. S2G’s proprietary, highly-efficient process was integrated into Pennakem’s existing chemical facility beginning in April 2016 and has produced industrial-grade sugar-based glycols from natural, non-food waste during a five-week scale-up campaign. The bio-glycols will be used as a drop-in replacement for common petroleum-based chemicals currently used in a wide range of consumer and industrial products such as resins, PET/PEF plastic drink containers, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, coolants and antifreeze. “The successful demonstration of S2G’s Bio-Glycol Process at scale validated the reliability and economic viability of our technology based on solid operational experience,” said Mark Kirby, President and Chief Executive Officer of S2G. “While glycol supply has long been dominated by oil and natural gas, S2G has proven our ability to provide natural, fossil-free glycols that challenge petrochemical glycols on both cost and performance.” In addition, S2G achieved three significant customer-based milestones throughout the campaign. These included successful product evaluations by multiple industrial customers; the sale of bio-glycols to an industrial resin plant; and, the production of sample quantities of United States Pharmacopeia (USP) quality propylene glycol (PG) that has been reserved for select glycol customers who have expressed interest in sourcing high quality bio-glycols as a replacement for their petrochemical-derived sources. “S2G bio-glycols have identical performance to petroleum-based materials, yet they generate far less greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jeff Plato, Director, Corporate and Business Development of S2G. “S2G looks forward to its products being integrated into the value chains of multi-national consumer and industrial product companies who want to curtail petrochemical-use and provide more sustainable products for their customers.” “We are extremely impressed with the seamless integration of S2G’s innovative, high-yield bioconversion process into our existing chemical production infrastructure,” said Tom Waldman, President of Pennakem. “The combination of S2G’s innovative process and Pennakem’s 75 years of manufacturing expertise using biorenewable feedstocks will lower costs and could catalyze the demand for sustainably and economically produced bio-based glycols.” S2G’s sugar-to-glycol technology is a simple, durable, and efficient process that utilizes low-cost renewable feedstocks to co-produce an economical supply of high value speciality chemicals and sustainable bio-glycols for use by consumer and industrial product manufacturers. MT www. s2gbiochem.com Processing performance of bioplastics – A new database for manufacturing companies Embedded in the framework of a joint project of four partners, process data of bioplastics, which are available in the market, are clearly arranged as a new, freely accessible internet database. The database provides users an opportunity to address the two approaches concerning the processing of bioplastics, which arise either out of material properties or process techniques. In the first case, the user has the knowledge of conventional materials but is looking for a bioplastic alternative, which can be a suitable substitute. Concerning the second case, the user can simulate the process technique by searching for the appropriate bioplastic that is suited for this process technique from the database. For a quick orientation, the first material evaluation results for the database user are categorized by means of a traffic light system. If the user has made a pre-selection, he can now delve deeper into the subject by viewing the data collected during the project. The user can easily transfer the data in the form of reports, to his machine. Derived from the focus of the project, the different processing characteristics such as blow moulding or demoulding behavior in the injection moulding process are being dealt with. The process data is based on scientific laboratory experiments as well as experimental setups from practice. They serve users as code of practice in the processing of bioplastics. In addition to this database, a guideline was published. Both the database and the guideline are currently in German language. only. They will soon be also available in English. This project is supported by the German Ministry of Food and Agricultur. MT www.biokunststoffe-verarbeiten.de bioplastics MAGAZINE [04/16] Vol. 11 7
