China Looks to Corn to Boost Bioplastic

China reportedly hoped to alleviate its excess supply of corn in part by converting it into bio-based plastic products.

Reuters reports the country's grain bureau late last month issued a five-year policy that called for more non-food uses of surplus corn.

The plan — which didn't provide much in the way of details — included using more corn in livestock feed and increased production of ethanol, but it could also be a boost to country's nascent polylactide sector.

Polylactide, or PLA, can be made from corn starch and is used to produce plastic products such as bags or plates.

Jilin, a major corn producing province in northeastern China, offered financial incentives to eight companies to make bioplastic in recent years and banned the use of conventional plastic bags in 2014.

Observers suggested that such restrictions would be needed for broad acceptance of PLA-based bags, which are twice as expensive as normal plastic bags. If a plastic bag ban was implemented across China, the domestic market for PLA could reach 3 million metric tons annually, an official from state-owned food processor Cofco told Reuters.

Although increased Chinese production of PLA could benefit Changchun Shengda Biomaterial and other companies receiving government incentives in Jilin, it could disrupt the global PLA market.

The move could also impact corn prices worldwide, which remained low amid a global oversupply.

China was long averse to using food crops for non-food uses, but Reuters noted that government purchases of corn in the past decade led to an estimated stockpile of more than 200 million metric tons of the crop — much of it not fit for human consumption.

The global market for renewable plastics is expected to grow dramatically in coming years, but critics suggested that converting China's excess corn into bioplastic would take too much time and money — without making a sufficient dent in the country's stockpiles.