Why Thailand became Asia’s rising biobased star

Policy and raw materials supply are propelling biobased growth in Thailand

Thailand’s government has made bioeconomy growth a centrepiece of its development strategy since 2021.

With tax incentives for biobased investors, efficient costs, and abundant feedstock, the nation is emerging as Asia’s rising biobased star in foodtech, industrial biotech, and beyond.

We look at why biomanufacturing has flourished in Thailand and the investments that have put the Southeast Asian nation on the map.

Investors pile in

Thailand is primed to become a precision fermentation food hub in Asia Pacific, according to research consultancy Hawkwood Biotech. The company ranked Thailand top-of-class in 5 out of 7 categories that make for biomanufacturing success, including labour, utility, and capital costs.

Companies have been quick to notice these advantages, including homegrown startups. Regene Bio, the first precision fermentation startup founded by Thai entrepreneurs, secured undisclosed financing earlier this year for its plant-based milk protein. Its microbe-manufactured compounds mimic cow’s milk in taste and nutrition, the result of combining synbio with Thailand’s abundant agricultural feedstock.

Thailand’s Advanced Greenfarm is another domestic foodtech company. It is turning fast-growing pondweed – an uncommon foodtech feedstock – into nutritionally-rich powders and proteins. From its hydroponic farms in Nakhon Pathom, the company now supplies almost 200 shops around Thailand with its products.

Domestic companies may be on the rise but it is foreign (often Asian) investors that are helping Thailand build its industrial capacity. Singapore-registered Full Circle Biotech announced a 7000-tonne capacity factory for insect protein in Thailand earlier this year. Already, its entire future supply has been snapped up in offtake deals with Thai aquaculture farmers wanting a feed alternative.

The country is also making headway in industrial biotech capacity. German industrial giant BASF recently announced a new plant for APG – a biobased surfactant – in Thailand. Their only other AGPG plant in Asia is located in China.

Such a diverse range of investments only indicates one thing: Thailand ticks the right boxes for global competitiveness, from government policy to infrastructure, feedstock availability, and costs.

Boosted by policy

Policy has been the all-important factor explaining the build-out of high-value biobased capacity in Thailand over the last seven years.

The government’s 2017 Bio-Circular-Green (BCG) Strategy is key to understanding the policy landscape in Thailand. It represented the government doubling down on historical efforts to stimulate biobased production, circular manufacturing, and green industry more generally.

Although biofuels were the target of government bioeconomy initiatives in the early 2000s, the policy focus now switched to more technologically sophisticated sectors such as biomaterials and, in particular, bioplastics.

The 2017 strategy has, on the whole, paid off. In the years that followed, Thailand grew its biobased supply chain considerably, particularly in bioplastics.

In 2019, the country became the world’s second-largest producer of PLA (polylactic acid, the most common bioplastic). This was despite producing none of the material in 2016, a year before its policy statement on growing the bio-sector.

In 2021, Thailand reached 23.6% of the global production capacity for PBS (Polybutylene succinate, another common bioplastic). From 2019 to 2021, its bioplastic exports doubled, both in volume and value. A new plant from Natureworks represented a major leap in Thai bioplastics capacity.

More bioplastics manufacturing is in the works for Thailand. Major US producer NatureWorks is currently constructing a 75, 000 tonnes annual capacity PLA plant in Nakhon Sawan province.

A biobased development strategy

The vision of a vibrant bioeconomy in Thailand became more urgent in 2021 as the Covid pandemic rolled on. In that year, the Thai government made the biobased, circular, and green sectors central to its post-pandemic recovery strategy.

A national BCG working group was formed to oversee the whole process, from R&D to regulatory frameworks and creating new industrial sectors.

The 2021-2026 BCG strategic plan aimed to increase Thai GDP by THB 5 trillion. This target highlighted the main purpose of Thailand’s biomanufacturing ambitions all along: to boost growth, employment, and lift itself out of middle-income status. In this, Thailand joins many other middle-income countries that are nurturing green growth to bolster their economies as a whole.

Biomanufactured products hold so much promise for the Thai economy due to the dominance of agriculture, which makes up around 10.5% of the country’s GDP. Biomanufacturing offers the opportunity to squeeze more revenue out of the raw materials that the country already makes, representing a natural path to growth.

Thailand’s bioeconomy strategy is echoed by its national industrial strategy, Thailand 4.0 policy advocates for bioeconomy development, identifying biofuels and biochemicals as Thailand’s major growth engines.

Attracting high-value investors

Ensuring that biomanufacturing growth serve the country’s development goals means attracting the right kind of foreign investment.

The Thai government currently offers tax exemptions on corporate income for up to eight years. To maximise the development value of these foreign biobased investments, the government links the size of tax breaks to the sophistication of the tech that companies are bringing to the table.

This is designed to attract the most advanced biobased sectors to Thailand, meaning those biobased processes and technologies that maximise value-add, GDP, and competitiveness.

To make the country as attractive as possible to these investors, companies willing to invest can also benefit from import duty exemption on machinery and raw materials needed in production.

With measures like these, the Thai government has tried to eliminate any possible barrier to advanced biomanufacturers setting up in the country.

Food giants rally around Thai startups

Major food corporations, both foreign and domestic, are also helping startups in Thailand thrive.

Space-F is an incubator set up by food suppliers NIA, Thai Union Group, Thai Verage, and Nestle. At the same time, Japan’s Ajinomoto is offering a support programme for fermentation and alternative proteins in the country. These are all signs that global food players are keen to capitalise on Thailand’s biomanufacturing advantages and tap into higher-value products.

Private sector involvement in the Thai bioeconomy was baked into the national strategy from the start. The 2017 BCG government strategy was launched in overt collaboration with industry: it began with a memorandum of understanding signed by major pirate corporations, research centres, and public institutions.

Feedstocks abound

Aside from tax breaks, Thailand’s bioeconomy sector would not be where it is today without the immense store of raw materials from its agricultural industry.

The country is one of the world’s top producers and exporters of sugarcane, cassava, and palm oil, amounting to 25, 21.5, and 12.2 million tonnes in annual production respectively.

When Dutch company Corbin invested in a bioplastics plant in eastern Thailand, it said that the country’s excellent raw material sources were a major reason for setting up there. Bioethanol biorefineries cluster in the northeast of the country, where cultivation is concentrated.

Yet as climate change buffets these sectors, Thailand’s industrial feedstock composition may have to change. Shifting from food-based feedstocks to the inedible wastes left behind from cultivation may be the only way for Thailand to maintain its food supply while also reserving enough raw material for industry.

Regulatory progress

The Thai economy has all the components to grow its global position as a biomanufacturing producer.

Yet while Thailand has attracted a lot of investment into biotech R&D, there is still an imbalance between supply and demand-based policies.

The food approval process in the country remains stringent, slow, and precautionary – in other words, out of sync with the growing number of foodtech alternatives now available and the government’s desire to encourage growth in value-adding sectors.

Despite its rising reputation as a novel protein tech hub, the country has not approved a single fermentation-derived product for sale in the country. It is still in the process of developing regulations for cultivated meat.

With no products approved for the domestic market, fermentation companies in Thailand will have to export to other countries where more mature foodtech markets are to be found.

This export focus means that Thailand will have to rapidly upgrade its workforce and regulations to bring supply chains up to international standards. Thailand is already a well-developed export economy yet upskilling its workforce will be vital if the country is to expand the synbio-rich sectors that the government is keen to cultivate.

The government has taken steps in the right direction here. In November 2025, it released $153 million for advanced industries like biotech, including training programmes to upskill workers. It is the first direct sum given to the biobased industry, as opposed to more indirect measures like tax incentives.

Despite these barriers, there is reason to believe Thailand’s policy environment will only become more favourable. The bioeconomy enjoys solid political backing there, with successive Thai governments having shown commitment to using it as an engine of development.

Political will, combined with an immense local raw materials supply, means Thailand’s rise as a biobased producer is in no danger of slowing.

Source

World Bio Market Insights, 2025-12-24.

Supplier

Ajinomoto Co., Inc.
Corbin
Nestle
Royal Thai Government
Space-F
Thai Union Group
Thai Verage

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