Most bioplastics are produced from agricultural raw materials such as starch, sugar, vegetable oil. They are produced by biotechnology process into plastic materials. Bioplastics are used to replace petrochemical plastics in many products.
Bioplastics are environmental friendly. They reduce carbon footprint, reduce global warming and reduce waste treatment. Although bioplastics have much potential and several advantages, but they still have inferior properties to conventional plastics.
Also, bioplastics present some processing problems with conventional plastics converting machineries.
Due to economy of scale, bioplastics are less cost competive than conventional plastics. By modification of bioplastics, their performance are increased considerably equal to or even exceeding that of conventional plastics. The modification of bioplastics is a process called compounding. In many cases, compounding also make bioplastics more cost competitive with conventional plastics.
Global Biopolymers can produce bioplastics compounds that meet most commercial applications. We can do custom compounding to customer’s specifications.
There are several materials that can be compounded with bioplastics. At Global Biopolymers we have two materials which are commonly used, they are, Thermo Plastic Starch (TPS) and Thermo Plastic Elastomer (TPE). These two materials are compounded with bioplastics such as Poly Lactic Acid (PLA).
Thermo Plastic Starch (TPS) is made from tapioca starch which is abundant at low price in Thailand. Bioplastics compounded with starch improve processing capability and reducing the bioplastics cost. Thermo Plastic Elastomer (TPE) is made from natural rubber which is also abundant at low price in Thailand.
By compounding with TPS and TPE, the performance of bioplastics are improved as well as making the costs more competitive to conventional plastics.