Sustainable Plastics - September/October 2022 - 36

inside at... CJ Bio
CJ Bio has big
plans for PHA
PHACT granules
With the current surge of interest in renewably sourced
materials, the timing could almost not be better to bring a
new PHA production facility on stream. In May of this year, CJ
Bio, a division of South Korea- based CJ CheilJedang, did just
that. Sustainable Plastics talked with Max Senechal CCO, CJ
Bio about PHA, the new plant and CJ Bio's very considerable
ambitions for the future.
C
J Bio's first PHA plant,
located in Pasuruan,
Indonesia, has a rated
capacity of 5,000
tonnes and is the sole producer
in the world of amorphous PHA,
a softer, more rubbery version
of the PHAs that are currently
being produced elsewhere. The
product is essentially an evolution
from the amorphous material
developed by Metabolix back
in the 2014, 2015 time frame,
according to Max Senechal,
who was at that time working at
Metabolix. The Korean biotech
company acquired the PHA
technology from Metabolix in
2016 and has directed considerable
resources over the past
four to five years at improving
and scaling up the technology.
" As one of the biggest biotech
companies in the world, CJ is
mostly known for its amino acid
business, animal feed business
lysine methionine and so forth, "
he said. " The technology that's
employed to ferment amino acids
is actually very similar to the
36
technology used to make PHAs.
In other words, from a technology
point of view, there are a lot
of synergies and similarities. "
At the time CJ was also exploring
activities beyond just
amino acids, including setting
up several internal programmes
that involved using biotechnology
to produce chemicals.
" Moving into PHAs made a lot
of sense, " said Senechal. " Significant
improvements were
made to the microbiology - to
the strain engineering as well
as to the process to produce at
large scale, " he added.
The company's first product
out of the gate is amorphous
PHA, the reason being, said
Senechal, that it's a highly differentiated
PHA.
" Also, the material is an excellent
modifier for other biopolymers
and therefore allows
us the ability to leverage the
positioning of some current bio
polymers in the market and get
to market quicker that way. But
I also want to make it very clear
September/October 2022
that we have a much broader
portfolio of technology then
just the amorphous PHA. CJ
certainly has the intention to
launch other grades of PHAs
that will broaden the market exposure
in the very near future. "
Bioengineering,
a core expertise
PHA is not just one material, but
a family of perhaps several hundred
different types. As a company
seeking to gain a commercial
foothold in the PHA space,
differentiation is important, said
Senechal. He emphasized that,
while all PHAs are produced in
more or less the same way - " It's
all fermentation, it's all intracellular
accumulation of the polymer "
- the actual differentiation
occurs with the ability to engineer
microbial strains in order
to design PHAs with specific
characteristics. CJ Bio has developed
a comonomer structure
for PHAs: a PHA that is made
up of 3HB and 4HB comonomers.
" We
have the ability to engineer
our strains to target a specific ratio
of those comonomers.That,
in turn, gives us the possibility to
target some very specific range
of performance, and then the
first grade we came up with was
amorphous PHA, " said Senechal.
Amorphous PHA has a low
TG, which means it is very soft
at low temperature and it is an
excellent modifier for polymers
such as PLA, as it can improve
toughness, improve tear resistance
and the modulus of PLA
and of other polymers. Such as?
" PBAT is an interesting one,
PBS is another one, as are other
PHAs: what's very fascinating
about biopolymers is that
there's not a biopolymer that's a
perfect solution for everything.
Having the ability to work with
multiple products and combine
for a specific application is going
to be very important. "
He continued: " It all goes
back to our ability to design
strains and microbes that can
do that. Bioengineering is a very
core skill for us. CJ Bio is one
of the largest fermenters in the
world, so we benefit from the
capability to start from the very
small and then build a plant that
will produce at very large scale. "
Asked about the feedstock CJ
used, Senechal confirmed that
was sucrose from sugar cane in
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