Corn Plastics: Enormous Business Opportunities

Retail giant Wal-Mart said that starting from November 1, 2005, 3779 Wal-Mart stores in the United States and Wal-Mart supermarkets in neighboring countries began to use corn plastics for food packaging, which is produced by the United States Nature Works. At the same time, Wal-Mart also announced that Wal-Mart supermarkets around the world will gradually promote corn plastic food packaging in the next few years, thereby fully replacing the chemical plastic food packaging that has been used.

As the world's largest retail supermarket, Wal-Mart has more than 5,300 large and small supermarkets in stores, shopping malls, member stores, and community stores around the world. The amount of food packaging consumed can be imagined. Wal-Mart said that although the price of corn plastics is higher than that of chemical plastics, Wal-Mart’s sales costs will increase. However, the news that chemical plastic food packaging was frequently exposed to cancer caused consumers to lose trust in chemical plastic food packaging. Choosing non-toxic and environmentally friendly corn plastic food packaging can regain consumer trust in the fierce market competition.

The data shows that corn plastic has been successfully applied in medical bone nails, tissue engineering medicine, etc., and the application in daily life has not been a breakthrough. Wal-Mart's corn plastics action has allowed corn plastics, which have been on the edge of the plastics industry, to take the first step into the mainstream market. The "Jade fans" who cling to corn plastics have completed a beautiful turn.

In July 2005, Prof. Ren Jie, deputy dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai and director of the Nano and Biopolymers Research Institute, announced that his successful "one-step" production process for corn plastics has begun industrialization. The “one-step” corn plastic granule price is 1,000 US dollars / ton, basically close to the price of genuine chemical plastic pellets. The news also opened a "popular" mass production door for corn plastics.

Industry prospects

After a decade of research and development, the technical development of corn plastics has matured, and Corn Works of the United States Nature Works has begun to enter the plastics industry. Although most of them are still in the industrial trial stage, they have shown strong strength to flex their muscles in the plastics industry.

The first and foremost is the packaging industry. Plastic packaging products are a pillar industry in the plastics industry, including plastic bags, food packaging boxes, and beverage packaging. The application of corn plastic in the packaging industry is the most extensive. In Japan, Europe and other countries, corn plastics have been applied to packaging materials.

At the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan, Japanese companies demonstrated the entire process of production, use, and degradation of disposable lunch boxes, beverage cups, food packaging bags, and plastic trays made of corn plastic. Currently, Asahi Kasei Corp. and Toyo Kogyo Co., Ltd. and other packaging companies have started to engage in the production of corn plastic packaging.

At present, the global corn plastic raw materials are sourced from Nature Works Corporation. The higher cost makes the packaging industry in the downstream industry chain not form an industrial scale. The corn plastic products produced by Japanese and European packaging products companies are only used in some regions. And industrial experiment stage.

The materials used to make agricultural mulch mainly come from chemical plastics. The non-degradability of agricultural plastic mulches produced by chemical plastics has caused serious environmental pollution. The use of corn plastic agricultural film, after use, directly to the landfill plastic degradation, to avoid the pollution caused by chemical plastics. The reporter learned that in some parts of Europe and China, production of agricultural plastic film using corn plastic as raw material has started. However, biodegradable materials have been added to some synthetic plastic mulches, and the consequences are even more serious. Synthetic plastics are degraded directly into the ground, resulting in the consolidation of cultivated land.

First, in the textile industry, the corn fiber made from corn plastic has better air permeability and feel than polyester, which can change the shortcomings of polyester materials that are prone to static electricity and poor air permeability. Versace in France has applied corn fiber to some senior men's clothing; while DuPont in the United States has taken a look at the permeability of corn fiber and used it in underwear; some companies have developed socks and gloves made of corn fiber. .

In addition, corn plastics can also be used for plastic toys, plastic housings for household appliances, automotive interiors, and steel doors and windows. For example, Japan’s Fujitsu Corp. has manufactured a laptop computer with a corn plastic case, and some toy companies in Japan have begun to develop toys made of corn plastic.

In addition to its widespread use in everyday products, corn plastics are particularly prominent in medical practice and are the most successful areas of corn plastics applications. The first is medical nails. Before the treatment of bone fractures and other orthopedic diseases, stainless steel bone nails were used. The patient must be cured after two operations. The use of corn plastic bone nails requires only one operation to implant the bone nails. At the same time, the bone nails are also degraded in the human body. The reporter learned that the price of corn plastic bone nails is about 50% higher than stainless steel bone nails, but a large number of patients choose corn plastic bone nails in order to avoid the pain of two operations.

The application of corn plastics in tissue engineering scaffolds is irreplaceable. Skin-culturing scaffolds in skin tissue engineering have always been a problem. Corn scaffolds degrade directly into carbon dioxide and water after successful skin cultivation, which can greatly relieve the suffering of patients.

Ease oil consumption

Tracing the origin of corn plastics should be after the global oil crisis in the 1970s. People are aware of the non-renewability of oil. Maybe someday in the future, humans will lose their oil resources and paralyse the modern human life that depends on oil for transportation power and daily needs. At this time, human beings are constantly looking for alternative energy sources, hoping to find renewable and non-polluting energy resources to solve the impending oil crisis.

In the following decades, scientists began to continuously research in the laboratory how to make plastics such as corn, sorghum and soybeans that are renewable, non-polluting, and other specialties. Just ten years ago, Nature Works Inc. of the United States, a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company of the United States at the time, scientists of the company jointly developed a "two-step" production of corn plastic. After ten years of research and development, the strength and plasticity of corn plastics have basically reached the level of chemical plastics.

The emergence of corn plastics also gave the oil industry a lifeline - a breathing space for the oil industry. The rise in oil prices has a direct impact on the prices of chemical plastic raw materials. The data provided by Tianjin Customs in 2004 showed that in November 2004, the average price of imports of genuine plastic raw materials in the primary shape of the Tianjin Port had reached US$1,166/ton, up 36.8% from the same period of last year. By November 2005, the price of plastic raw materials in Guangdong increased by 66.7% in 2005 compared to 2003, and the price reached around 10,000 yuan/ton, while the price of imported plastic pellets increased by 85.7%, and the price was about 1,400 US dollars.

According to industry analysts, the annual consumption of petroleum for manufacturing plastics accounts for 4% of the annual oil production, and consumes 136 million tons of oil each year. The production of one ton of chemical plastics requires the consumption of three tons of oil, and the annual output of global chemical plastics is 30 million tons, which means that it will consume 100 million tons of oil.

Imagine that the production of 1 ton of corn plastic requires about 3 tons of corn. At present, the annual corn stocks in the world reach about 100 million tons. If all of them are used to produce corn plastics, the annual output will be about 30 million tons, which is equivalent to the global one-year demand for plastics.

Some experts predict the continuous improvement of corn plastic technology and the continuous expansion of application fields. Corn plastic will become the main force in the plastics industry. Naturally, the demand for chemical plastics will gradually decrease, which means that the demand for petroleum in the plastics industry will continue to decrease. At the same time, it alleviated the increasingly severe global oil crisis.

The production of corn plastics also solves the problem of global corn stocks, which can serve two purposes. In 2004, the global stock of corn was 111.71 million tons, China's 33.05 million tons, accounting for one-third of the world, second only to the United States, ranked second in corn reserves. Different from other crops, corn will produce yellow zymogen (carcinogen) after being stored for one to two years and become inedible. Industrial use is the only way out.

In China, 80% of corn is used for feed, with low added value. For China, solving the problem of invented corn is undoubtedly a major breakthrough to solve the three rural issues facing China.

Price - The predicament of mass production

Some people may ask: Since corn plastic is so magical and has the advantages of being biodegradable and non-pollution, why is it not used on a large scale and there is no sign of corn plastic on the market?

Corn plastics have been in existence for ten years. In the past ten years, only Nature Works Inc. of the United States has the production technology of corn plastics, which is the “two-step method”. This reporter learned that the United States Nature Works Corporation is currently the only company in the world to produce corn plastic raw materials, the current price of corn plastic raw materials in the US $ 3,000 / ton, the price of chemical plastic raw materials is 1,000 US dollars / ton.

From a price point of view, the price of corn plastic raw materials produced by Nature Works is 3 times the market price of raw materials for chemical plastics. According to data provided by Nature Works, in 2004 Nature Works had an annual production capacity of 140,000 tons, but the output was only 45,000 tons. The companies that purchase corn plastic raw materials are mainly used for the production of high-grade plastic products, biomedicine, textiles, etc., and a small part for industrial experiments.

According to analysis by Nature Works, corn plastics are difficult to popularize due to the complex production process of the “two-step method” and the cost is much higher than that of chemical plastics. The companies currently buying corn plastics from Nature Works Corp are mostly world-renowned multinational companies. For example, some McDonald's restaurants in the United States use corn plastic drink cups; Coca-Cola's soft drink packaging, etc. These well-known companies are only in their part. The product uses corn plastic products in a trial position.

According to expert analysis, after ten years of development, Nature Works corn plastics technical indicators have been comparable enough with chemical plastics, but the price factor has always been the plight of corn plastics into difficult to use. Ren Jie told reporters: "If corn plastics are to be mass-produced, the only way is to reduce costs."

The so-called "one-step method" is to ferment corn into lactic acid and then directly make corn plastic granules. The Nature Works company's "two-step process" is to ferment corn into lactic acid, and then to make intermediates and then ring-opening polymerization of poly(lactide). "One-step method" simplifies the "two-step method" process, naturally reducing the cost of corn plastic production.

The "one-step" process was used to reduce the price of corn plastic from $3,000/tonne to $1,000/tonne, which is also basically close to the price of chemical plastics. From a market point of view, it is at this time that corn plastics can start to enter the market and have a good chance of mass production.

Ren Jie's "one-step method" corn plastics has already begun industrialization, and Shanghai Tongliang Biomaterials Co., Ltd. has started to build a corn plastic production line, and it is estimated that the production capacity will reach 100 tons in 2006. The reporter saw a letter of intent and a purchase order from all over the country on Ren Jie's desk. The decrease in corn plastic cost price saw corn plastic see a brand-new market. Ren Jie told reporters: “Now the one-step method of corn plastic is very hot, but our industrialization practice has only begun. We have to wait until mass production before we can produce results. If we give corn plastic industrialization at this time, It's too early. We need to settle down to research and develop products and gradually understand the corn plastics market from the industrialization process.”

Alternative or coexistence?

The birth of the "one step method" technology changed the fate of corn plastics that cannot be universally used because of the high cost. Ren Jie predicts that corn plastics will fully replace chemical plastics within five years, plus the biodegradable and environmentally friendly characteristics of corn plastics, and the current technology, product features, etc.