Capacity Additions

Historically, there are very few players in the biodegradable plastics sectors mostly in the USA and Western Europe. With an exceptional acceptance of biodegradable plastics, a number of companies started their pilot plants and subsequently till 2017-2018, there were more than 25+ major producers of biodegradable plastics globally. The most important player in the PLA field is NatureWorks followed by Total Corbion. NatureWorks operates a 150 kilo tons of PLA capacity at Nebraska, USA while Total Corbion started commercial production of PLA at its 75 kilo tons facility in Rayong, Thailand.

NatureWorks is the leading producer of PLA globally, in the wake of increase in demand, third party sources have indicated that the company may carry out an expansion of its plant in the next few years but no capacity expansion news has been announced by the company.

Teijin has a 10-kilo tons facility in Japan while most other Japanese producers of PLA do not have any significant capacity as the production is mostly carried out in their pilot plants. The major Chinese producers of PLA include Zhejiang HiSun Biomaterials Company, Esun (Shenzhen Esun IndustrialCo., Ltd), Jilin Cofco Biomaterials. WeforYou (Austria based)also operates a 75 kilo tons plant in China.

There have been lot of announcements in the PLA biodegradable plastic capacities and most of the companies especially have announced their projects in China. ShanghaiTongjie Liang Biomaterials Co. and Global Bio-Chem Technology Group are some of the major players that have announced capacity additions in the PLA type of biodegradable plastics.

The major European PLA producers are Synbera, Sulzer and Futerro (Galactic-TotalJV). Syberia technologies operate the biggest commercial facility at the Netherlands producing around 5 kilo tons while both the plants operated bySulzur and Futerro are of small scale and each of their capacity is estimated to be around 1.5 kilo tons each.

Historically, the Western European region has witnessed some capacity closures of pilot plants and there may be small closure during the forecast period as well. According to our market model on biodegradable plastics, the total PLA capacities additions from 2019 to 2025 is believed to be around 300 kilo tons. Most of the capacities are likely to be added in China.

In terms of Starch blend capacities, most of the capacities are present in China followed by other countries. Novamont has recently increased its starch based production by 40 kilo tons to reach 150 kilo tons at its Patrick facility in Italy. In terms of PHA, PHBH, new plants are coming up in Russia by Bio-On JV while Kaneka Corporation may increase its PHA production capacity up to 20 kilo tons in Japan, mostly to export to European and Japanese consumers.

In terms of the market share of new capacity additions Asia-Pacific, mostly China is expected to lead during the forecast period. Some new investment in the biodegradable plastics value chain in other countries/regions has also been announced.

Note: In China, most of the capacity are announced and mostly are delayed. The producers and capacity data is not available and contradictory and hence not verifiable. We also believe not all capacity announced will be online and on time. Some of them will get delayed and eventually canceled owing to various reasons.

Global Biodegradable PlasticsCapacities (Plants & Projects)