Growth in PLA bioplastics: production capacity of over 800,000 tonnes expected by 2020

Nova-Institute has published the first results of a multi-client market survey of the international bioplastics market. 25 companies have developed production capacity at 30 sites worldwide of over 180,000 t of polylactic acid (PLA), one of the leading bio-based plastics. PLA is used mainly in packaging, but it also has a large number of other durable applications.
According to their own forecasts, existing PLA producers are planning considerable expansion of their capacity to around 800,000 t/year by 2020. There should be at least 7 sites with a capacity of over 50,000 t/year by then. A survey of lactic acid producers – the preliminary stage of PLA production – revealed that production capacity to meet concrete requests from customers that cannot yet be named could even rise to roughly 950,000 t/year (nova Institute Bio-based News, 7 August 2012).