Potentials of Renewable Raw Materials

Core Messages

• Between 1999 and 2004 the worldwide production capacity of biopolymers quintupled to about 250,000 tons implicating that biopolymers are emerging from a niche market application to mass production scale.
• The ecological advantages of biopolymers are convincing and the technological foundations have been laid.
• Polymer manufacturers are not only blending biopolymers with petro-based polymers (e.g. Ecoflex), but also to some extent with other biopolymers (e.g. PLA or cellulose polymers).
• High potential for biopolymers can be seen in the packaging market due to their specific advantages, e.g. enable packaged food to stay fresh longer, clean disposal of bio waste.
• Based on economies of scale, increased experience levels as well as technological innovations, the costs for producing and processing biopolymers will decrease; the increase in price for fossil resources will further help to reduce the differences in prices.
• The broadening of the application spectrum through the development of new materials and products as well as the increased availability on the market caused through the upgrading of production capacities will, in combination with suitable communication strategies, create a certain awareness for the existence and the benefit of biopolymers among consumers and should create an adequate consumer need.
• The market for biolubricants is a small, steadily growing market with interesting applications.
• The predominant application for bio oils focuses on the hydraulic oil market, especially for mobile hydraulic systems, which consumes about half the amount of bio oil.
• Consumers are interested in biolubricants because of the minimised contamination risk through oil leakages.The financial as well as the ecological damage in the case of a leakage is significantly smaller as the exchange and disposal of the contaminated soil is much easier.
• The demand for starch hydrolysis will increase, as new technologies, e.g. bio-ethyl-alcohol production, require starch hydrolysis as an intermediate step.
• On the basis of the current technological progresses, the cellulose hydrolysis shows a huge future potential as it not only offers the possibility of producing bio-ethyl-alcohol, but also to manufacture biopolymers or commodities.