As I already mentioned in Bioplastics, there are two main types of renewable plastics:
Identical chemistry to oil based plastics
New chemistry
Today I’m going to tell you a bit what’s being done to renew old plastics thanks to natural resources.
Companies involved in the production of these plastics know very well the biggest advantage of their materials with respect to other bioplastics: direct substitution. Since their composition is the same as very common plastics, like PE or PU, they save users the need to adapt their processes. On the other hand, it only needs to be marketed as an improved product, of added value, in already existing markets. Great part of the job of bioplastics producers has being until recently to explain their products and find applications, more than selling sizeable amounts of it.
For this reason, big polyolefin producers have already moved to add renewable products to their portfolio. Dow, I have already explained its growth and diversification...
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The 10th of July Dow announced the buying of Rohm & Haas for $18.8 billions. For those of you not familiar with the companies, let’s just say that Dow is a huge chemical company, with annual sales of $54 billions. Rohm & Haas is a smaller player, but it has specialised products, which have a better profit margin.
And those differences are the key to understand this sale. Dow becomes an even bigger company, but also it acquires a business less dependant on massive sales that allows it to diversify its portfolio. The table below shows Dow’s divisions, together with the products managed by each.
Dow's Products and Divisions. Source: Dow's webpage
In the materials area, Dow is well known for selling commodity products. Amongst them, the big classics: PP, PE and PS. To stay alive in the world of commodities, sales have to be huge and a strong distribution network is required. Production capacities are so big that costs are lowered.
On the other hand, such a big company...
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Before I start, I would like to say that this post intends to be a brief introduction to the wide field of bioplastics, which I intend to discuss in more detail in the future. Let’s say that it’s a guide for those of you who are not familiar with this family of products. When talking about bioplastics, we usually refer to polymers sourced partial or totally from natural and renewable resources. Some of them have a different chemistry from already existing plastics while others are as common in their oil based form as polyolefins or polyurethane. Today I’m going to talk about the “new” ones; soon I’ll discuss how old plastics are renewing themselves thanks to plants.
There are two main rivals at the moment in the bioplastics market: PLA, or polylactic acid, and starch based blends. Both are mainly sourced from corn, although any plant rich in starch or sugar can potentially be a viable source. They also share their capacity to biodegrade, a quality that...
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here are several motivations for the starting of mundomaterial, most of them purely personal. Mainly I want to keep updated on the industry news, get involved with the new tools for comunication, expose my ideas to the world and wait for its reply. Just to introduce myself, I would say that I’m an strategy consultant, that i have developed most of my professional activity in the UK, I’m a polymer specialist and I’m pretty curious.
What kind of subjects should you expect from the blog? My expertise lies in plastics, almost any kind. The other big area that does it for me is environment, so some of my favourite subjects are right between those two: Bioplastics, recycling, solutions to reduce oil dependance… We all have our preferences when reading and writing, but I’m hoping the blog will allow/force me to research new areas, outside my expertise. Some of those areas are nanomaterials, ceramics, composites and all those that i haven’t thougt about and...
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