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- NEW YORK, New York
(ENS) - The kernel of a new industry for America's heartland is a first
of its kind factory that will make the raw material of plastic cups, packaging
and fabric from corn, not petroleum.
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- Cargill Dow Polymers, a joint venture between Cargill
Incorporated and The Dow Chemical Company, today leapfrogged over other
plant based plastics companies by announcing plans to build a "world-scale
facility" in Blair, Nebraska to manufacture plastic products from
corn.
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- Companies have been experimenting for years with plant
based plastics as replacements for petroleum based plastics with their
toxic byproducts, wastes and inability to break down in landfills.
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- Agricultural engineer Kenneth Sudduth examines a sample
of corn. (Photo by Bruce Fritz courtesy USDA) Cargill Dow Polymers (CDP)
has stepped into the lead by offering a family of durable plastics derived
entirely from annually renewable agricultural crops that can compete with
hydrocarbon based fibers and packing materials in cost and performance.
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- Cargill and Dow plan to invest more than $300 million
in the business and production facility.
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- A new technology will use natural plant sugars from corn
to make a "proprietary" polylactide (PLA) polymers for fibers,
plastic packaging and other products. Future applications of the technology
could include injection blow molded bottles, foams, emulsions and chemical
intermediaries.
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- This new technology allows the company to "harvest"
the carbon that living plants remove from the air through photosynthesis.
Carbon is stored in plant starches, which can be broken down into natural
plant sugars. The carbon and other elements in these natural sugars are
then used to make NatureWorkstm PLA, which will be made into utensils,
packaging or fibers for cloth adn carpeting.
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- The new CDP plant will be located at the site of Cargill's
corn wet milling plant at Blair. It is expected to come on stream in late
2001 with an annual capacity of 140,000 metric tons of NatureWorks PLA
polymers.
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- "The decision to locate at Blair was based on a
number of factors, including the availability of natural plant sugars needed
to make PLA, proximity to existing Cargill operations, easy access to railroads
and freeways and an excellent pool of people qualified to train for high
value jobs as operations technicians," said Jim Stoppert, CDP president
and CEO.
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- Approximately 200 people will be employed in the construction
of the CDP plant, which will be operated by a staff of about 100 people.
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- Typical Nebraska cornfield (Photo courtesy Gina's Nebraska)
Cargill's corn wet milling division produces about 600,000 tons of Sweet
Bran® 60, 100,000 tons of corn gluten meal, 50,000 tons of corn oil,
1.5 billion pounds of high fructose corn sweeteners, and 70 million gallons
of fuel grade ethanol.
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- Cargill,s new Bioscience Division in Blair is working
on genetically engineered technologies "to enhance food and people,s
health," Cargill said in a statement in May 1999. No biotechnology
is involved in creating the new plastic from corn, Stoppert said today.
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- William Stavropoulos, president and CEO of Dow, said,
"What's exciting about this technology is its multitude of applications
and the fact that plastics can come from renewable resources such as corn,"
Stavropoulos said.
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- "NatureWorks polymers offer the opportunity to develop
truly sustainable products, and because we are using raw material that
can be regenerated year after year, it is cost competitive and environmentally
responsible," said Stavropoulos.
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- CDP currently has the capacity to manufacture more than
4,000 tons of PLA per year at a plant near Minneapolis, and plans to double
that capacity during 2000. In addition, it expects to begin construction
of a large scale European plant in two years.
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