{"id":14268,"date":"2006-08-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-29T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bio-based.eu\/news\/index.php?startid=20060830-03n"},"modified":"2006-08-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-29T22:00:00","slug":"demand-booming-for-natureworks-polylactide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/demand-booming-for-natureworks-polylactide\/","title":{"rendered":"Demand booming for NatureWorks polylactide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Unprecedented growth is pushing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.natureworksllc.com\/corporate\/nw_pack_home.asp\" >NatureWorks LLC<\/a> to maximize production in Blair and accelerate projects there to expand output of polylactide resins. Growth drivers include high oil prices, proactive brand owners and consumer interest in green products.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Addressing the supply-side squeeze, NatureWorks instituted 24-7 production several months ago and began a concerted effort to manage its growth, said Dennis McGrew, president and chief executive officer since February.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you move from intermittent production to 24-7, you define where the bottlenecks are in the process,\u201d he said in a telephone interview from the company\u2019s offices in Minnetonka, Minn.<\/p>\n<p>Only recently has the NatureWorks PLA plant in Blair started to approach its annual nameplate pellet capacity of 300 million pounds. The privately held operation withheld production and sales details.<\/p>\n<p>NatureWorks is waiting for authorization from its parent, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cargill.com\/\" >Cargill Inc.<\/a>, to expand capacity, McGrew said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As we complete additional capacity projects in Blair, we will begin to study alternative sites.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Blair plant, which opened in 2002, is collocated with various Cargill operations on a 1-square-mile site. Cargill supplies dextrose to NatureWorks along with infrastructure utilities.<\/p>\n<p>To avoid overcommitment, NatureWorks transitioned recently to a policy of managed growth from its historical unconstrained growth in processing natural plant sugars from corn to make proprietary NatureWorks PLA.<\/p>\n<p>The policy change surprised some. &#8220;People cannot call in and get all they want immediately,\u201d he said. &#8220;Some folks are wishing they had come to the party earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McGrew characterized the growth in NatureWorks PLA demand and market applications since early 2005 as a &#8220;trifecta\u201d combining:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sustained high oil prices that NatureWorks &#8220;thought would fall off in the last half of 2006.\u201d\n<\/li>\n<li>Speedy global adoption of corporate social responsibility goals in packaging, with brand owners pushing the issue to a &#8220;much greater extent than in the past.\u201d\n<\/li>\n<li>Consumer desire for &#8220;environment-friendly alternatives and a willingness to pay more\u201d for those products.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The supply squeeze is frustrating some who recently &#8220;decided to adopt PLA when asked by a brand owner or retailer\u201d to do so, McGrew said. NatureWorks makes families of resins with different properties. PLA can be used in thermoforming, sheet extrusion and injection stretch blow molding. <\/p>\n<p>NatureWorks said it has experienced a 100 percent increase in its customer base over 30 months and an annual average growth rate of 45 percent over four years. &#8220;We are moving from the early adopters to the early majority,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The company competes with petroleum-based resin makers, but it is the world\u2019s only volume PLA producer. Others have small-scale PLA output, but there is &#8220;no one (else) with any significant capacity,\u201d McGrew said.<\/p>\n<p>NatureWorks employs about 220, with 45 percent each in Blair and Minnetonka and the balance scattered around the world, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Cargill and Dow Chemical Co. of Midland, Mich., set up a 50-50 joint venture, Cargill Dow Polymers LLC, in 1997. Privately held Minnetonka-based Cargill, a major agricultural products processor, acquired Dow\u2019s stake in January 2005.<\/p>\n<p>(Cf. news of <a href=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/natureworks-llc-learning-to-trust-while-in-enemy-territory\/\" >May 09, 2006<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><b>Unprecedented growth is pushing NatureWorks LLC to maximize production in Blair and accelerate projects there to expand output of polylactide resins. Growth drivers include high<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[],"class_list":["post-14268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14268"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=14268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}