The bioplastics division of UK-headquartered Biome has been awarded funding of £273,000 ($359,000) from the UK Government’s Innovate UK.
The grant is to support a £350,000 ($460,000) collaborative project to scale-up the company’s compostable bioplastics materials with the University of Nottingham’s Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.
The funding will also accelerate the testing of the commercial viability of the three most exciting candidate materials in the division’s current research portfolio. This project will use microwave technology in the development of an efficient, industrially scalable manufacturing process and will conduct further larger-scale testing at the Biorenewables Development Centre in York.
Since 2013, Biome’s Bioplastics division has directed more than £6 million ($7.9m) of research and development funding, supported by various grants and in association with a number of UK universities, towards a new portfolio of bio-based and biodegradable materials.
This work is focused on the replacement of aromatic co-polymers currently widely used in the market with a new generation of heteroaromatic polyesters, which have the potential for differentiated functional performance coupled with tailored biodegradation.
It is anticipated that this project will start in October 2020 and will be completed within two years.
Paul Mines, Biome Technologies’ chief executive, commented: “This latest research project is an important enabling step in understanding the performance and functionality of Biome’s most exciting novel polymers. We believe these materials could represent an important addition to the business’s product range in due course and will bring benefits to manufacturers, consumers and the environment.”
The Plastics In Packaging.