Russian company PoliKompleks plans to invest around €30m to construct a bioplastics production complex in Russia's far western enclave of Kaliningrad.
The industrial biotechnology firm has reached agreement to establish plants for products based on lactic acid and polylactides (PLA) for the manufacture of some 50,000 tpa of bio composites, according to the Kaliningrad administration.
The complex will also have a biodegradable de-icing reagents plant with a capacity of around 12,000 tpa.
Agreement to go ahead with the project, which also involves electronic monitoring instrument producer Sarad of Dresden, Germany, was signed at the recent industrial technology fair Hannover Messe.
Work on the PoliKompleks complex, which is due to begin this year, should be completed by 2016 and is expected once operating to have annual sales worth around €34m.
The project is due to be the basis of a biochemical cluster, which alongside similar industrial schemes for the automotive and shipbuilding sectors, will become a focus for future economic growth in the region, according to Nikolai Tsukanov, the Kaliningrad governor.
The company was formed in 2009 and has been active in industrial biotechnology in several regions in Russia, as well as in Kazakhstan and Venezuela.