The plastics feedstock chain is growing greener, and more and more companies are scrambling to get a foot in the door. Latest to invest is US agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Decatur, Illinois / USA; www.adm.com). The company has announced a USD 25m equity investment in privately owned US company Rennovia (Menlo Park, California; www.renovia.com), which develops catalysts and processes for chemical products based on renewable feedstocks.

Founded in 2009, Rennovia claims to produce high-value chemical products at a 20-25% cost advantage over petrochemical processes. The California firm plans to scale up its process to produce bio-based PA intermediates adipic acid and HMDA from pilot- to demonstration scale during 2014, with commercial production targeted for 2018.

Evidently, the prospects for polyamide appear brighter for ADM than its previous foray into renewable plastics. In 2012, it exited the Telles (Clinton, Iowa / USA) bioplastics joint venture with bioscience company Metabolix (Cambridge, Massachusetts / USA; www.metabolix.com). The jv was created in 2006 to commercialise PHA-based bioplastics – see Plasteurope.com of 16.01.2012.

A number of other producers of PA 6 and PA 6.6 are moving into renewables. Invista (Wichita, Kansas / USA; www.invista.com), for example, is cooperating with Ingenza (Roslin / Scotland, www.ingenza.com). DSM (Sittard / The Netherlands; www.dsm.com) is collaborating with starch producer Roquette Frères (Lestrem / France; www.roquette.com) on an amber project – see Plasteurope.com of 10.05.2011. BASF (Ludwigshafen; www.basf.com) has an R&D cooperation for bio-based succinic acid with Purac (Gorinchem / The Netherlands; www.purac.com) – see Plasteurope.com of 03.08.2011).

In the PA chain, Ascend Performance Materials (Houston, Texas / USA; www.ascendmaterials.com) seems to be the only company not jumping on the bio-bandwagon. It has decided that this is not an option for its adipic acid production, said Scott W. Rook, vice president engineering polymers. “Bio-based feedstocks are not appropriate for the processes we use,” he explained – see Plasteurope.com of 25.10.2013.