CJ Bio has big plans for PHA

With the current surge of interest in renewably sourced materials, the timing could almost not be better to bring a new PHA production facility on stream. In May of this year, CJ Bio, a division of South Korea- based CJ CheilJedang, did just that. Sustainable Plastics talked with Max Senechal CCO, CJ Bio about PHA, the new plant and CJ Bio’s very considerable ambitions for the future.
CJ Bio’s first PHA plant, located in Pasuruan, Indonesia, has a rated capacity of 5,000 tonnes and is the sole producer in the world of amorphous PHA,  a softer, more rubbery version of the PHAs that are currently being produced elsewhere. The product is essentially an evolution from the amorphous material developed by Metabolix back in the 2014, 2015 time frame, according to Max Senechal, who was at that time working at Metabolix. The Korean biotech company acquired the PHA technology from Metabolix in 2016 and has directed considerable resources over the past four to five years at improving and scaling up the technology.

“As one of the biggest biotech companies in the world, CJ is mostly known for its amino acid business, animal feed business lysine methionine and so forth, “ he said. “The technology that's employed to ferment amino acids is actually very similar to the technology used to make PHAs. In other words, from a technology point of view, there are a lot of synergies and similarities.”

At the time CJ was also exploring activities beyond just amino acids, including setting up several internal programmes that involved using biotechnology to produce chemicals. “Moving into PHAs made a lot of sense,” said Senechal. “Significant improvements were made to the microbiology – to the strain engineering as well as to the process to produce at large scale,” he added.

The company’s first product out of the gate is amorphous PHA, the reason being, said Senechal, is because it's a highly differentiated PHA.

“Also, the material is an excellent modifier for other biopolymers and therefore allows us the ability to leverage the positioning of some current bio polymers in the market and get to market quicker that way. But I also want to make it very clear that we have a much broader portfolio of technology then just the amorphous PHA. CJ certainly has the intention to launch other grades of PHAs that will broaden the market exposure in the very near future.”

Bioengineering, a core expertise
PHA is not just one material, but a family of perhaps several hundred different types. As a company seeking to gain a commercial foothold in the PHA space, differentiation is important, said Senechal. He emphasized that, while all PHAs are produced in more or less the same way - “It's all fermentation, it's all intracellular accumulation of the polymer” -  the actual differentiation occurs with the ability to engineer microbial strains in order to design PHAs with specific characteristics. CJ Bio has developed a comonomer structure for PHAs:  a PHA that is made up of 3HB and 4HB comonomers.

“We have the ability to engineer our strains to target a specific ratio of those comonomers. That, in turn, gives us the possibility to target some very specific range of performance, and then the first grade we came up with was amorphous PHA,” said Senechal.

Amorphous PHA has a very low TG, which means it is very soft at low temperature and it is an excellent modifier for polymers such as PLA, as it can improve toughness, improve tear resistance and the modulus of PLA and of other polymers.

Such as? 

“PBAT is an interesting one, PBS is another one, as are other PHAs: what's very fascinating about biopolymers is that there's not a biopolymer that's a perfect solution for everything. Having the ability to work with multiple products and combine for a specific application is going to be very important.”

“It all goes back to our ability to design strains and microbes that can do that. Bioengineering is a very core skill for us. CJ Bio is one of the largest fermenters in the world, so we benefit from the capability to start from the very small and then build a plant that will produce at very large scale,” he explained.

Asked about the feedstock CJ used, Senechal confirmed that was sucrose from sugar cane in Indonesia. CJ is one of the largest buyers of the carbon feed-source sugar, sucrose or dextrose in the world. The Pasuruan plant was built on an existing amino acid production facility.

“As part of the CJ family, we benefit from the largest buying power of sugar feedstock around the world. That said, we can use a variety of feedstocks; we've demonstrated in the past that we can use different feedstocks whether it be dextrose from corn or cellulosic feedstocks; but right now, because of the scale and because of the strong position that we have in Indonesia, we're using sucrose from sugar cane.”

Starting small, with big ambitions
Even so, in the world of polymers, a 5000-tonne plant is a ‘drop in the ocean’, noted Senechal -- but in the world of PHAs, it’s not.
“It's small but we call it a commercial pilot plant. It is sufficient scale to allow us to us to do some pretty serious market seeding and testing, and we are already working with customers at relatively large scale,” he said.

Moreover, as this initial product is intended as a modifier, there is also the multiplier effect that occurs because of the combination with other polymers.
CJ Bio, however, has no intention of stopping at 5000 tonnes and already is starting to unfold a number of very ambitious plans. In addition to broadening its offering to include a semicrystalline grade of PHA, the company is also mulling the construction of a mega plant in the next two to three years with a capacity of 50,000+ tonnes.

“We are aiming to scale to 65,000 tonnes by 2025, and we have plans for continued expansion in the years following,” he said.

At that scale, the economics will also improve; although CJ Bio’s offering is currently competitive with other PHA products in the market, the economics are still defined by the 5000 tonnes it produces. However, in this respect, too, the times are changing, Senechal pointed out.

“I've been in this industry for many years, and I think the way people look at price has shifted - for a customer, the cost of a biopolymer is very different today than it was even 5-6 years ago. We are seeing that the true costs of using polymers are becoming more and more internalized for a lot of brands and a lot of users of polymers. The cost of packaging, for example: today, they are also looking at potentially having to include the circularity aspect, which means  the conversations are a lot more mature than they were five years ago in terms of the pricing of biopolymers,” he said.

PHAs also offer a number of very unique properties, he added, that can bring tremendous value to the application as well. They are the only available polymer that can readily biodegrade in a variety of environments. Identifying those applications  - think mulch film, marine type applications - where biodegradability in situ can bring significant value in use is CJ Bio’s first target. Another advantage is the fact that not only are PHAs home compostable, combined with other polymers they can improve the compostability profile of these other polymers. PLA is a main focus in that respect. Using amorphous PHA as a modifier, CJ Bio believes that not only will this improve the performance and the mechanical properties of PLA, but also its the end-of-life profile. “That's a big win for the industry,” said Senechal. “The Holy Grail is to make PLA home compostable and some very encouraging results are already emerging.”

Two materials that are meant to work together
It is also the reason for CJ Bio’s current close collaboration with PLA manufacturer NatureWorks, although work on PLA actually started back in the Metabolix years and was one of the reasons CJ Bio chose to launch an amorphous PHA as its first commercial product.

“It's a great advantage for us to be able to benefit from a polymer that's already had success in the market. So, combining with NatureWorks has done a great job at opening up the doors of the biopolymers market,” explained Max Senechal.

“We saw tremendous synergies. I think the companies are very similar in their approaches to wanting to develop new products and new applications and that was the main driver behind this alliance. PHA and PLA are two materials that are meant to work together.”

And as Heidi Lebel, marketing director at CJ BIO, emphasized, the partnership is more than just a supply agreement but really is about developing innovation and driving those targets and goals for end of life, as well as applications,  together, in a joint process. “We announced an MOU couple of months ago in the press, but our goal is to have it turned into a joint development formally by the end of this year,” she said.

Looking ahead
Biobased polymers still have a long way to go in order to become impactful players on the market. And while the market has seen considerable growth, they are still very much niche materials.

And in the European Union, legislation is making it even more difficult for biopolymers, including PHA, to gain momentum. Despite the fact that PHAs are actually produced by microbes, the European Commission has seen fit to qualify PHA as a non-natural polymer.

The reasoning behind the qualification is that the Commission defines natural polymers as ‘polymers which are the result of a polymerisation process that has taken place in nature’.

The important distinction the Commission makes is whether the polymerisation process has taken place in nature or is the result of an industrial process involving living organisms. ‘Based on the REACH Regulation and the related ECHA Guidance, polymers produced via an industrial fermentation process are not considered natural polymers since polymerisation has not taken place in nature’.

The Commission notwithstanding,  CJ Bio is still very interested in the European market. Senechal: “A lot of the leading brands are European; a lot of the very large brands are leading the thinking in terms of improving the sustainability of packaging and we think that eventually this will drive change - also in Europe. We're certainly not writing the European market off I think that, as an industry, PHA producers in particular, as well as producers of other biopolymers, need to come together. We need to do a  better job of proving the case that we are essentially a natural option to a lot of the products that are being phased out right now under the Single Use Plastics directive."
There's still a tremendous amount of opportunity to use biopolymers in Europe, even though the SUPD is making it more difficult, he added. “It's a massive market and we think we can bring some interesting and very innovative solutions to some of those segments -it's just something we need to work with and continue to prove our case and educate the market.”
CJ may be a newcomer in the field, but it has a lot of legacy through the Metabolix heritage, he concluded.
“I think that we're bringing a very unique position to the market by combining a world class technology that Metabolix developed, and CJ has improved upon, with a world scale capability. These are two very strong assets that we're combining and that we aim to leverage, to make a big impact in the market."