Page 61 - Plastics News Issue May 2025
P. 61
PRODUCT NEWS
New biodegradable bioplastics for
cosmetics, food and agricultural packaging
PHBV copolymer for applications in the packag-
ing and agriculture sector, using innovative pro-
cessing technologies for this type of polymer.
These technologies include hollow-body blown
extrusion for bottles and the application of the
copolymer as a coating on paper substrates and
agricultural mulch films.
The overall objective of the project is also to op-
timise the synthesis of the material and favour
olyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are biocom- the scaling up of larger quantities to be able to
patible and biodegradable plastics in soil offer PHBV at an industrial level and reach cer-
Pand marine environments synthesised by tain applications that are currently occupied by
a wide variety of microorganisms, which share conventional materials.
very similar characteristics with plastics of pet-
rochemical origin. The biotechnology company Venvirotech, which
specialises in the transformation of organic
The most recent studies focus on the search for waste through a proprietary technology that
cheaper alternative substrates, such as agro-in- uses bacteria to produce PHA bioplastics, is co-
dustrial waste or industrial by-products, and on ordinating this project. The company Enplast is
extraction strategies to reduce product costs. also participating in the project and will be re-
In this way, the aim is to facilitate their incorpo- sponsible for validating the materials developed.
ration into a market dominated by petroleum- As a link between the two companies, Aimplas is
based plastics. The most commercialised PHAs in charge of the new PHA formulations, both for
have certain limitations to be processed by con- the production of packaging and for the formu-
ventional technologies, so one of the objectives lation of coatings.
is to optimise them so that they can be used in
different applications within the plastics industry, The new formulations for cosmetic packaging
as well as to scale up their production and sup- will be biodegradable and compostable and will
ply companies in the sector. comply with the established requirements, which
will reduce their environmental impact and allow
In this context, the COM4PHA project is com- a better acceptance of the product by the mar-
mitted to developing new formulations of bio- ket. This innovation may also be of interest to
plastics based on the PHAs group to promote other processors and end-users in the food and
new lines of product development based on beverage sector, in addition to cosmetics.
these biodegradable materials. In particular, the
project is working on formulations based on the For coating formulations in the paper and ag-
May 2025 PLASTICS NEWS 61
