Bio-on, Innova Imagen, to produce bioplastic

24 Feb '19

3 min read

Pic: Bio-on

Bio-on, an Italian intellectual property company, and Innova Imagen, a company of the Himes Group with operations in the textile sector in Mexico and the United States with particular attention to eco-sustainable innovation, have joined hands to produce 100 per cent natural and biodegradable bioplastic, obtained from agro-industrial residues and by-products.

The two have signed an exclusive agreement to design the realisation of the first plant in Mexico for this purpose.

The agreement grants to Innova Imagen the exclusive right to realise on the field the development of the investment and evaluate the business initiative regarding the use of the Bio-on technologies in Mexico for a period of 18 months. To Bio-on this is an agreement worth half a million euros, the first of its kind in Central-North American region and confirms the success of the business model based on the licensing of one of the most innovative technologies in the sector of biopolymers.

The collaborative initiative will begin in the next weeks with the use of different feedstock largely available in Mexico, including wastes from the agave processing, in order to implement an engineering project of an industrial plant for the production of PHA bioplastics with different possible scenarios which combine different raw materials to be valorised and numerous market segments to be satisfied.

“The technology developed and demonstrated at industrial level by Bio-On is promising in the face of the global problem of contamination by plastics and its consequences on human health, and the possible development of PHAs applications for textile and fashion industry particularly attracted our interest, because they have the potential to replace synthetic fibres such as polyester, one of the largest sources of pollution of our oceans caused by microfiber shredding when the clothes are washed and become in contact with our ecosystems and remain for centuries just as many of the existing plastics,” declares Rogelio Himes, co-founder and CSO of Innova Imagen.

The tasks related to the engineering and business plan will be implemented by both teams while the ENG (Engineering) e RAF (Recovery And Fermentation) Bio-on units will work in the development and improvements of synergies and interconnections between the future PHA plant and other production sites available in the geographical area to be identified.

The market approach will be elaborated taking into account three important and increasingly evident drivers, also in the central and north American markets: the constantly and strongly rising consumers’ demand for eco-sustainable products, the brand-owners’ commercial strategies and the emerging worldwide regulations that ban the traditional plastics and push toward bio-based and biodegradable materials.

“The PHA revolution is already a reality,” underlines Marco Astorri, president and CEO of Bio-on. “Those who really want implement radically green technologies and shift towards a really sustainable production systems have no more excuses. Himes Group, particularly sensible about the environment protection and concerned by bad human habits in plastic consumption, made the right choice and Bio-on team really looks forward to starting this new collaboration in Latin America in order to satisfy the fast-growing market of PHA bioplastics.”

All bioplastics developed by Bio-on (PHAs or polyhydroxyalkanoates and PHBs or polyhydroxybutyrate) are obtained from renewable plant and lipid sources without any competition with food supply chains. In most cases, they guarantee the same thermo-mechanical properties of conventional plastics with the advantage of being completely eco-sustainable and 100 per cent naturally biodegradable in natural way. In addition, they offer application possibilities, even completely unpublished, in sectors where traditional plastics are not used. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India

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