Poly-Lactic Acid is a bioplastic made from biorenewable raw materials like carbo-hydrates. PURAC offers the lactide monomers as polymerization feedstock and in cooperation with Sulzer the polymerization technology to make PLA.

This offering will significantly reduce the process and product development time thereby enabling faster and more reliable market entry for PLA producers. The new process requires substantially less investment and has unmatched potential for economic scale-up to high volumes.

The first plant to use this new technology will be built by Synbra in the Netherlands for the production of BIOFOAM ®, a foamed product made from this PLA, complementary to their wide range of polystyrene foam products offered today. The new plant with a capacity of 5,000 ton/year is targeted to be operational by the end of 2009. Synbra intends to assume a leading position in Europe as supplier of biologically degradable polymers from renewable sources and plans to expand the PLA capacity to 50,000 ton/year.

By the end of 2008, a demonstration and product development plant will be available exclusively to partners of PURAC, to facilitate both product and process development to meet various application and customer demands. The demonstration plant will be located at Sulzer Chemtech in Winterthur, Switzerland.