26 Jun 2021 Will the biodegradable plastic PHA finally deliver?

Amid the growing plastic waste crisis, producers of polyhydroxyalkanoate think a changed world is ready for their biodegradable polymers, but others have doubts.

In April, Daniel Carraway, founder of the polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA start-up RWDC Industries, found himself in an unusual forum for someone trying to sell plastic.

Carraway was being interviewed by the Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr on the FootPrint Coalition’s YouTube channel. The FootPrint Coalition is Downey’s venture capital firm and also an RWDC investor. The FootPrint Coalition’s other investments include a bamboo toilet paper company and an outfit developing mealworm protein.

Encouraged by Downey, Carraway pitched his biodegradable biopolymer as the solution to the plastic waste crisis. “We have to clean up the mess we made,” Carraway said. “But we also have to stop making the mess.”

The plastic industry has been trying to establish a recycling infrastructure since the 1970s, he noted, but it “just doesn’t work.”

Carraway and other proponents are hyping PHAs, as the next big thing, but they are hardly new.

Nature has used this class of polymers to store cellular energy for millions of years. Companies have been trying to commercialise them — via industrial fermentation — for several decades. But despite what should be a strong selling point — biodegradability in a wide range of environments — they haven’t taken off.

The list of companies that have tried and failed to bring PHA to market keeps growing.

This time, boosters of the polymer maintain, will be different. The world has changed, they say. Cities are banning plastic straws and take-out containers, and PHA is a responsible alternative. Large consumer product companies are clamouring for biodegradable packaging. Indeed, PHA Skittles bags and Bacardí rum bottles are due out in stores soon.

Danimer Scientific, the firm responsible for these applications, puts the addressable PHA market at 230-million metric tons (t) per year — more than half the world’s plastic demand. Meanwhile, the PHA industry is still in its infancy, with capacity of less than 1-million t.

Detractors, however, warn that it won’t be easy for PHA to compete with the likes of polyethylene and polypropylene. PHA’s biodegradability is overhyped, they say. And the biopolymer is too expensive to compete with petrochemicals on a large scale.

Regardless, all eyes are on PHA….

The company leading the current charge for PHA is Danimer. The firm, based in Bainbridge, Georgia, started as a polylactic acid compounder and bought its PHA fermentation technology from Procter & Gamble back in 2007.

Only recently has the PHA business begun to gain significant traction for Danimer. The company opened its first commercial plant, in Winchester, Kentucky, last year. It can make 9,000 t per year and is being expanded to about 30,000 t by next year.

Danimer says it is struggling to keep up with forecast demand. The first plant, it projects, will be running at full capacity by the end of this year. Danimer is close to having the output for the expansion reserved by customers as well, CEO Steve Croskrey says. “If you count pending contracts, we’re there.”

The firm’s biggest-volume product right now, Croskrey says, is resin for drinking straws used in jurisdictions that have banned straws made from petrochemical plastic. Its sales may soon shift toward packaging.

Mars Wrigley plans to start selling Skittles in PHA bags by early next year. Bacardi plans to introduce PHA liquor bottles in 2023, replacing 3,000 t per year of conventional plastic. Danimer has also been working with PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay unit on snack bags.

Danimer went public last year through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Such SPACs, now trendy, are shell companies that raise money in the stock market on the promise that they will buy a high-growth firm….. Read more of the article here

Industry watchers say PHA has traction in the marketplace, though companies shouldn’t hype it. Ramani Narayan, a chemical engineer at Michigan State University, says the biodegradability of PHA has at times been “oversold,” creating the impression that it will quickly disappear in the environment.

But, Narayan notes, PHA is one of the most biodegradable polymers on the market. A bottle that finds its way into the ocean “is going to last for several years before it’s going to be removed by microbial metabolism, which is better than polyethylene and polypropylene, which will keep on accumulating,” he says. “So there is value.”

Jan Ravenstijn, an independent biopolymer consultant and a veteran of Dow and DSM, says PHA might indeed be on the cusp of a high-growth phase, a transition many new polymers finally make after years of development. It took the polylactic acid maker NatureWorks 23 years to finally turn a profit, he notes.

Evidence for PHA’s transition is the blistering demand coming primarily from Asia. “Prices have tripled over the past 9 months or so,” Ravenstijn says. “They can sell much more than they can make at the moment.”….

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