Bioplastics as a business

Plantura is a commercial brand of Benvic, entirely dedicated to the development of biopolymers derived from renewable resources. Sustainable Plastics spoke with Vittorio Bortolon, director in charge of the development of the biobased range of product for Benvic, about the growing interest in his company’s products. Can bioplastics fulfil their promise?

When it comes to bioplastics, misconceptions abound. Bioplastics are by no means all biodegradable or compostable. And even biodegradable bioplastics do not all simply degrade in the environment; most need to be treated in industrial composting facilities. Some bioplastics are even made from oil.

According to Vittorio Bortolon, the term ‘bioplastics’ is a misnomer, if there ever was one.

“The definition creates confusion from the beginning, as it refers both to compostable biodegradable material and material derived from renewable sources,” he explained.

Industrial or home compostable materials may be derived from biomass – or from fossil resources. Both are considered bioplastics.

The other group of bioplastics is more properly known as plastics derived from renewable sources; and this second group can be divided into either bio-based biodegradable polymers or bio-based durable polymers.

Polymers based on biomass that are also biodegradable include, for example PHA and PHB. On the other hand, there are bio-based materials that are not compostable or biodegradable, but that still are derived from renewable sources, such as sugarcane or cassava. The main resins in this group are ‘drop-in’ materials: bio-PA, bio-PE bio-PVC or bio-PET.

“Here, with the brand Plantura, we are training our customers to understand these differences, so that we can better understand what they want,” Bortolon noted.

From idea to company

The idea behind Plantura was to show that plastics derived from biomass could be a business. And the name?

“Plantura is a fantasy name,” said Bortolon. “The first three letters are P-L-A, as the first material we started looking at as a raw material was polylactic acid. The last two letters are R-A, are from Roechling Automotive, who was our partner when we started to develop this new business idea, in 2007. We then played with a few names and Plantura was the outcome.”

The company expanded and in 2015, Plantura Italia was launched. This was the company that was absorbed into Benvic Europe in 2019,  and through that merger Benvic gained access to the market for renewably sourced bio-based plastics.

Benvic, a multinational compounder currently operating 7 plants across Europe, is owned by Investindustrial, one of the major private equity funds in Europe. The fund is controlled by an Italian family active in a wide range of sectors.  

The acquisition was designed to enable the group to become the strategic partner of current and future customers with an offer of high performance, environmentally-friendly biopolymers for different sectors, including the automotive, food packaging, cosmetic and medical industries.

‘Reducing CO2 emissions is the driving force for bioplastics’

Bioplastics are still only a tiny niche in the plastics industry. And there are various inhibiting factors to growth, among which ignorance, quality, cost and supply. So what drove the founders of Plantura to dive into this highly uncertain, emerging market?

“The strategy behind Plantura was to approach the market with a product that was not based on oil. That meant no oil-based biodegradable materials, but a renewably sourced bio-based product”, said Bortolon. “And no, bioplastics is not taking land that would be used for food crops.”

According to bioplastics association European Bioplastics, studies have ‘decisively shown’ that the impact of bio-based plastics on the available arable land from 2010 to 2024 was negligible.

“Every year, 3% of arable land is abandoned as exhausted and no longer useable. According to European Bioplastics, in 2024 some 0.021% of all arable land will be used for biopolymers,” he said. “There is no problem at this point in time.”

The mission of Plantura is to produce polymers that meet maximum performance and the market demand, combining existing applications and technologies of oil-based materials, but with a strong reduction of CO2 emissions.

Plantura, he went on, focuses on PLA, but there are many other bio-based resins. It is a group that can be divided into three distinct categories. First, there is a category of biopolymers derived directly from vegetable biomass, for example, from polysaccharose, starch, cellulose, protein, natural rubber and natural oils.

“Then we have biopolymers produced by bacteria, from sugar derivates by directed polymerisation. The most famous of these are the PHA and PHB biopolyesters, but there are others. The bacteria digest the sugar or the amides and produce the polymer inside the cell,” he explained.

The third group consists of biopolymers obtained from biobased precursors, intermediates or polymers, extracted or derived from biomass and then polymerised.

“One big family are the bio-polyesters, PLA, and polyesters from bio-based aliphatic acid. But also polymers that are made from monomers derived from bio-ethanol, butanol and fermented sugar - bio-PA, bio-PU, bio-PET, bio-PE and bio-PVC – belong to this group,” he added.

“So, there are many technologies, and we simply don’t know which will come out on top. It is difficult to predict which technology will be the winning technology or the winning philosophy for the future,” he said.

“But: all these technologies will have an important impact on the CO2 emission.”

Personally, Vittorio Bortolon believes that reducing CO2 emissions will be the driving force for the future of bio-based plastics. It is a force that is emerging along two parallel tracks: one, through the increased recycling of fossil-based materials; and the second through the use of biomass-based plastics. Both trends are being pushed and pulled along by consumer opinion and legislation handed down by the European Union, with as aim to reduce the impact of plastic waste in the environment.

PLA: biodegradable and biodurable

Benvic's Italian brand, too, is pursuing a dual course, as it brings two families of PLA products to the market, both based on biomass.

“One is biodegradable; the other is bio-durable for different applications and both are bio-based,” explained Bortolon. “We want to avoid oil-based plastics: despite a short-term benefit for costs, long term they are not a sustainable solution.”

So what is PLA? “Polylactic acid is very well known material. Starting from corn or sugarcane, via fermentation you produce lactic acid, and then via a chemical reaction produce the polylactic acid. The ratio between sugar and the polymer is 1.4 kilos sugar for 1 kilo of polymer, which is very favourable,” he said.

He continued: “The carbon footprint is also far smaller. We achieve around 0.5 kg of CO2 per kilo of product. All other oil-based plastics are above 4.5 kg of Co2 per kg of polymer. So the benefit is there. And: we are talking here about PLA but almost all the biopolymers are in the same situation.”

In the area of bio-durables, Plantura is active mainly in the automotive and the furniture sectors. In furniture, the company’s first customer was a French furniture company for whom it has been producing the bioplastic seats for a line of chairs.

Recently, Plantura has also supplied its durable grade PLA to  leading Italian furniture company Kartell to produce their signature pastel-coloured chests of drawers and chairs. The company is also working with Plantura on various new projects.  

While the motivation may partly be due to marketing purposes, Kartell is also interested in developing a more sustainable product, said Bortolon.

“Because the performance of the product is quite interesting – it offers good UV resistance, the colouring is fantastic and the appearance is high-gloss, like an ABS. The material is over 84% bio-sourced – there are some additives inside that are not bio, but these are the current technical constraints we must deal with.”

The situation in the automotive industry is a similar one. The company launched in 2007 with Roechling Automotive as a partner, aiming to develop bio-based plastic applications for vehicles. The result was an under-the-bonnet application, made from a patented Plantura grade with a performance comparable with polyamide. Since then, Plantura has developed numerous under-the-bonnet parts. The company  guarantees to its automotive customers that the used plastic is recoverable via mechanical recycling.

“We have a new project with various OM’s for different under bonnet applications, like filter boxes, active grill shutters, so quite a lot of potential business. The challenge here is the price. Compared with standard products, it is higher, so we need to have a specific strategy for carmakers to adopt this material. It is not a technical issue. The technical aspects have already been resolved; so PLA can substitute PA and PP in different applications under the bonnet.”

Coffee capsules – a logical application?

Coffee capsules are an extremely interesting application area for Plantura. The company has developed a range of Nespresso-compatible and other capsules, all of which are industrially compostable. However, there is also a huge demand from consumers and brand owners for home compostable capsules. While making a home compostable material is easy, said Bortolon, meeting the requirements for coffee packaging with this material is not.

“However, I think we have one of the best industrial compostable solutions available, which  is produced in Italy and in the Netherlands by our Dutch partner, ATI (Advanced Technology Innovations B.V.) ,” he said. This company has developed a technology to produce the capsules in a different way, through injection moulding. Customers are supplied with a turnkey system that includes the filter and the closure with the capsule.

“It is quite complicated, users are looking for Nespresso compatible – or some other system and don’t realise how much technology goes into this product,” he pointed out.

Future developments

In packaging, Plantura is working on the development of a home compostable coffee capsule, but there are a lot of restrictions, said Bortolon. The combination of required material properties - high-temperature resistant, water-resistant, home compostable - is very difficult to realise, while good barrier properties are also needed. “The coffee is stocked in the supermarket for 2-3 months, and has to stay fresh.”

The company is also developing a bio-based container for cosmetics and has a new blow moulding grade of PLA for this application in the pipeline that is currently being tested by our cosmetics partners. “That will become available this year,” said Bortolon.

A further focus is compostable barrier film for food packaging, i.e. for fresh meat, vegetables. PLA generally has poor gas barrier properties, which has made it less suitable for these applications.

“Together with our Italian partner companies we have created a transparent film with a good oxygen barrier,” said Bortolon. “It is still in a developmental stage but will be industrially available before summer when it will be officially presented”.

Mechanical recycling is another area the company is studying. “Because of the shortage of material, we are always interested in recycling products. And we have a few developments: we’ve demonstrated that it is possible to improve the performance of PLA, so this is one of the key developments in the future. We are very interested in looking at second life PLA and industrial scraps of PLA. That is a source we can handle properly,” he explained.

The company already recycles its post-industrial thermoforming scrap from coffee capsules back into the production line and has partner companies that collect, grind and recycle material from other sources, as well.

But, said Bortolon: “With mechanical, and also chemical recycling – which we don’t believe offers opportunity for bio-based plastics - you add a lot of CO2 emissions, which means you exceed the CO2 emissions rates for virgin PLA. That’s the issue: there is no benefit on CO2 emissions to be gained. So we prefer organic recycling wherever possible.”

‘Bioplastics is a business’

While the market is small, it is growing. Benvic brand’s current share of the market varies from application to application. “In the film packaging we are not a leader; in the coffee capsule materials we will be one of the leading companies in Europe- but in the furniture area, we are a market leader: the volume is small, but it will become big in the future,” said Bortolon. What kind of companies become customers? Are they simply idealistic enthusiasts? “The enthusiasts among our customers are the one who have a clear idea that they can gain something from using these materials,” said Bortolon. “Although there are companies that are so conscious about the environment and willing to spend two or three times the cost of conventional plastics just because they want to save the planet, I also think that these companies want to spend money on bioplastics - because they consider that there is value to be gained from doing it,” he concluded.