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Paving the way for biobased materials : a roadmap for the market introduction of PHAs
Summary
This roadmap paper examines barriers to large-scale commercial production of PHA biopolymers, which are biodegradable alternatives to petroleum-based plastics. Scaling up PHA production is essential for offering plastic manufacturers sustainable alternatives that would not persist as microplastics in the environment.
The family of PHA polymers has been a key player in the biobased and biodegradable plastics research and development sphere for the past couple of decades.However, till this date, large scale production facilities and volumes have not yet become available to the plastic products market.Aside from the limited production volumes, the specific production process and feedstocks, the performance properties of PHA polymers substantially differ from the current state of the art materials in the plastics industry (PE, PP and PET).To accelerate the market uptake in the upcoming decades (going through the S-curve), it is crucial to identify which markets could function as early adopters of these relatively new type of plastics, given the specific beneficial properties of PHAs.Therefore Invest-NL and Wageningen Food & Biobased Research (WFBR) have performed this market study on PHA materials.The aim of this study is to pinpoint the market opportunities for PHAs.These opportunities are identified by analyzing the production technology, types of feedstocks used, the current production volumes and the environmental footprint of PHA materials.Specific focus is given to the material