New Developments in Environmentally Intelligent Bioplastic Additives & Compounds.
Scion, based in Rotorua, New Zealand, is a research organisation with approx. 390 employees firmly focused on a biomaterials future and has been working with bioplastics for about 10 years.
Scion recognised at an early stage that bioplastics represented a huge opportunity for New Zealand, with its traditional strengths in all aspects of the agriculture, horticulture, and forestry industries' value chains. Each year large volumes of a wide range of biomasses are processed for an increasing range of end uses in New Zealand. Such resources, and the residues from the harvesting and downstream processing, represent valuable sources of fibres, fillers, polymers and functional chemical additives for use in industrial biopolymer products, such as bioplastics.The core focus of Scion has been on additives and compounding formulations for enhanced performance in commercial bioplastics. This article could only give a condensed and incomplete overview of Scions activities.