| | JUNE 20228Depletion of petroleum reserves is providing an impetus to the global biopolymers market and the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19 PERCENT till 2025. How do you see the current evolution of the biopolymer market in India? What are the major factors contributing to its growth? The biopolymer market is at a very nascent phase in India primarily for two reasons - one is the production capacity of biopolymers in India and secondly it is the awareness or the cost implications. One has to really understand that the acquisition is still taking place. More and more work has to be done to reach out to the brand owners and organizations. More regulations have to be brought in to support the industry. Today, a lot of the biopolymers are mostly imported from different countries around the world. There is hardly any substantial production happening in the country. As a biopolymer company, we've just launched our product line wherein we have a capacity that goes to around 7000 tons per annum right now. We are going to make around 31,000 bags in this financial year. How do you see the Indian plastic industry moving from recyclable to bio-compostable plastic? Could you elaborate more on the plant based biopolymer which you are manufacturing? If you look at the macro market scenario right now, India consumes close to around two to four kgs per capita per annum, which is a very big number of plastic consumption per person. And we all know that we have generic problems of non-recycling system and we don't really have a very big ecosystem to recycle the plastic. We need more modern recycling systems that are available in different parts of the world. The government of India has also made some regulations on industrial process where 20 percent of the plastic needs to come from a recycled source. However, this is still a potent challenge looking at how much of the waste is already out there. Today, we are buying everything prepackaged. Our vegetables, fruits, grains, chips, everything that we are buying, we're buying in disposables now. Moreover, use of paper is depleting our water resources. We now have alternate solutions that need to be made bio-compostable that can be laminated with paper so that coffee can be sold or water droplets can be pulled in this and that will not hamper the quality of paper. There are many types of biodegradable plastic. One of the biodegradable products is called Oxo biodegradable, which means that a plastic bottle will break down in the presence of sunlight. But with the Oxo biodegradable we will be eventually having another potent process of selecting one set of classes which will be even harder. Second type is enzyme based biodegradables which start disintegrating after a long period of time. Now the third kind of plastic is the one we are talking about. It disintegrates NAVIGATING THE TRANSITION FROM RECYCLABLE TO BIO-COMPOSTABLE PLASTICMukul Sareen, Director of Business Development at HiTech Group in an interaction with Sudhakar Singh, Editor, Industry Outlook, shares his views on the opportunities and challenges in manufacturing bio-compostable plastic. Hi-Tech International is the first company in India to manufacture a plant-based bio-polymer ­ Dr. Bio.Mukul Sareen, Director - Business DevelopmentINDUSTRY INSIGHTS
< Page 7 | Page 9 >