Market Analysis Sees Great Potential For Bioplastics in Food Packaging

Related Vendors

TURCK GmbH

Elementar Analysensysteme GmbH

Angst+Pfister AG

Frost & Sullivan

2,000,000 Tonnes per Year Market for Bioplastics in Europe

Environmentally conscious consumers grow more and more aware of the problems with recycling packaging waste and the scarcity of raw materials. Therefore, degradable bioplastics could play an important role when packing food, medicals or consumer goods, analysts say. But also packaging of agricultural or gardening products could well become an important market for degradable bio-foils.

European committees COPA (Committee of Agricultural Organisation in the European Union) and COGEGA (General Committee for the Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union) have published an assessment of the potential of bioplastics that indicates a potential 2,000,000 tonnes/year market in Europe:

• Catering products: 450,000 tonnes per year

• Organic waste bags: 100,000 tonnes per year

• Biodegradable mulch foils: 130,000 tonnes per year

• Biodegradable foils for diapers 80,000 tonnes per year

• Diapers, 100% biodegradable: 240,000 tonnes per year

• Foil packaging: 400,000 tonnes per year

• Vegetable packaging: 400,000 tonnes per year

• Tyre components: 200,000 tonnes per year

• Total 2,000,000 tonnes per year

Cereplast, a manufacturer of degradable bio-based polymers recently published a research result by Ramani Narayan, Distinguished Professor of Michigan State University, that attests bioplastics a 42 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions.

New Technologies Offer Great Potential For Bioplastics in Food Packaging

Meanwhile packaging producers aim to develop active plastics for food packagings that help to minimize odours. Frost & Sullivan expects big potentials for bioplastics with integrated freshness-, temperature or quality indicators. If bioplastics will witness a break-through on the packaging-market depends, according to company officials, not only on a growing customers demand but also on the developement of new technologies. Better permeance properties of food packaging foils could well increase a polymers market value.

"Companies currently work on new features with different technologies to upgrade the properties of biopolymers. These inventions could well change the way plastics are used in the packaging industry" Vijayan added.

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