OCPA - RAW MATERIAL: CARBON DIOXIDE BY WAY OF CORN

by Dr. Gord Surgeoner, Ontario Agri-Food Technologies

Opening celebrations for the new plant were attended by more than 400 employees and guests, including Don and myself. The celebrations were held in Omaha, as Blair was too small to host the event. Guests included many customers/partners, including individuals from Japan, Europe and Canada, who participated in the demonstration of the enormous potential of PLA.

On April 3, 2002, Don McCabe, 2nd Vice-President, Ontario Corn Producers’ Association, and Gord Surgeoner, President, Ontario Agri-Food Technologies, attended the official opening of the Cargill Dow PLA plant in Blair, Nebraska (population 7512). The following report was filed by Gord Surgeoner.

PLA – polylactic acid – is derived from corn through innovative processing. Used as an industrial feedstock, PLA can be converted into a wide range of consumer products. There were two product categories demonstrated at the celebration: ‘fibres’ and ‘packaging’.

PLA products in the fibre room included a vast array of shirts, sweaters, umbrellas, drapes, bathrobes, carpets and PLA-filled duvets. Fibre spun from PLA is highly flexible, resists moisture, and is more fire-retardant than currently used fibre sources. It holds dyes and can be spun as both knits and weaves. It is also being used for free molds of fibre for such purposes as the lining of shoes.

Producers of PLA-fibre products describe the material as highly versatile and can envision many opportunities for its use. Recently, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted unanimously to allow products made from at least 85% PLA to make the claim: ‘derived from naturally occurring sugars’. Tag lines used on the products included ‘corn/comfort/carefree’, and my favourite, ‘raw material: carbon dioxide by way of corn’. Partners for the fabric market included those from Japan, United States and Europe.

On display at the Omaha, Nebraska opening ceremonies were totes of PLA ready for shipping to fibre and packaging companies to make consumer products from carbon dioxide by way of corn.

The ‘packaging’ demonstration room featured a wide variety of PLA plastics. Products included plastic wrap films, drinking cups, sleeves for golf balls, formed packing boxes, credit cards and a variety of containers made from PLA plastic. The biggest claim for ‘Nature Works’ plastic is that it’s fully biodegradable. I brought home some candy wrappers I’m going to test in my garden.

The remarkable story of PLA began in 1991 with the chemistry concepts of Dr. Pat Gruber, Vice President Research and Chief Technology Officer of Cargill Dow, an independent company that includes representatives from both Cargill and Dow on its Board of Directors. The first ‘kitchen top’ PLA was formed in 1991 in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and a demonstration plant was built in Savage, Minnesota in 1995. The celebration we attended marks the opening of a full-scale plant in Blair Nebraska, which produces 40,000 pounds of PLA per hour (8,000 times the capacity of the original plant).

Investment of US$750 million for research and capital construction made this project a reality. Construction of the Blair plant took 19 months, and involved 17,000 cubic yards of concrete, 400,000 feet of wire and 90,000 feet of pipe. At peak construction, there were more than 600 construction workers on-site.

PLA “pills” next to a tie pin (approximate size of a pill is 4 mm x 3 mm). A yearly production stacked on top of one another would go from the earth to the moon, back to the earth and back to the moon in distance!

Blair was selected for the plant because the town also hosts Cargill’s wet milling plant, which processes approximately 180,000 bushels of corn per day. The PLA plant will process 40,000 bushels per day. In total, that represents 62.7 million bushels of corn each year. Presently, construction is underway for a world-scale lactic acid plant to feed the PLA plant. (Currently, the PLA plant purchases lactic acid, but the new plant will produce two-thirds of the world’s supply when it is up and running.) This 600-acre site rivals anything we see in places like Sarnia.

The PLA plant will provide approximately 100 full-time employees and use 225 square miles of corn production.

At the official opening, Randy Howard, President of Cargill Dow, proclaimed this the “start of a new industrial revolution”. James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA, stated that dependence on foreign oil was helping to finance terrorism and that new oil for the 21st century would be “American innovation combined with American agriculture”.

Ontario has great opportunities in this area, and has already made huge strides toward a bio-based economy. For us, the trip reinforced the belief that ‘Ontario: the Future is Right Here’, as Cargill Dow plans for three more world-scale plants. On our trip home, we envisioned new ways of marketing the value of agriculture to consumers: Canadian and U.S. Olympic teams clothed by corn, plastic beer cups branded ‘biodegradable: made from CO2 by way of corn’, and many other possibilities.

And included in our vision, of course, was locating the next plant right here in Ontario.