Novozymes and Braskem in bioplastic deal

Novozymes, it seems, is flooding my inbox with lots of news from Copenhagen, but this one is pretty significant for the bioplastic market.

Novozymes and Brazilian chemical company Braskem announced today that they formed a research partnership to develop large-scale polypropylene production from sugarcane. The sugar-based propylene production will use Novozyme's fermentation technology, although the development is expected to run for at least 5 years.

Polypropylene (PP) is current made from petroleum oil, and is said to be most widely used thermoplastic worldwide. The market is estimated to be worth $66bn with an annual growth rate of 4%. Global consumption for PP last year was 44m metric tons.

Braskem is also currently building a 200,000-tons-per-year green polyethylene plant in Brazil with ethanol from sugarcane as the raw material.

That facility is expected to start operations in 2011. Last month, Braskem signed a deal with Tetra Pak to supply the company limited volumes of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) derived entirely from a renewable feedstock.

Braskem will begin supplying Tetra Pak with 5 Kilotons per year of green HDPE from 2011, for use in the production of plastic caps and closures. The volume represents just over 5% of Tetra pak's total HDPE demand, and is said to be slightly less than 1% of its total plastics purchases.