With the help of the company Emsland, bekuplast is developing the use of vegetable fibres in the manufacture of plastic

As an exhibitor at ALLFORPACK EMBALLAGE PARIS, bekuplast is reporting on its website on an innovative experiment, conducted in collaboration with Emsland, a company also based in Lower Saxony and specialising in the extraction of native and modified starches, fibres, proteins, flakes and granules from renewable raw materials such as potatoes or peas.

The aim of this partnership is simple: to use plant fibres in the manufacture of plastic products.

The realisation, as you can imagine, is more complex and bekuplast makes no secret of the technical challenges encountered along the way. ‘While plastic is generally processed at a temperature of around 220 to 230 degrees Celsius, plant fibres from peas already burn at a temperature of 190 degrees Celsius,’ says Bekuplast, who emphasises, however, that the efforts have paid off in the end: ‘The use of pea fibre has made it possible to save around 20% of the plastic material and replace it with a renewable raw material. Fibre-reinforced plastic is not only sustainable, but also very stable’.

Plastic replaced by pea pods

The production of the first boxes was finally launched in the Bekuplast factory in Ringe with, once again, encouraging results according to Jana Klein, raw materials manager at bekuplast GmbH: ‘The tests with different container models were conclusive. We succeeded in replacing about 10 to 20% of the plastic in our containers with pea pods’.

However, there is still one difficulty: the price. ‘Currently, containers made with pea fibres are more expensive,’ admits the company, which is nevertheless seeking to remove this final obstacle by continuing its research with its partner.

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