Dive Brief:
- The global bioplastic packaging market for food and beverage is expected to grow at a CAGR of 36.8% from 2014 to 2020, reaching an estimated $28.5 billion in 2020, according to a new market report from Persistence Market Research.
- That market value is up from $3.19 billion in 2013.
- In addition to aligning with consumer demands for more sustainable packaging, bioplastics deliver other advantages over conventional plastics, such as glossy and attractive appearance, antistatic behavior, printability, a barrier effect and enhanced shelf life of fresh products.
Dive Insight:
Manufacturers can leverage growth of bioplastic packaging in two main ways: Increased sustainability within the supply chain and a new potential revenue stream.
Manufacturers can use packaging from more sustainable sourcing than traditional plastics, which can be a bright spot on a company's corporate responsibility and sustainability reports. However, challenges to sustainability revolve around the difficulty of recycling bioplastic packaging because of their complex separation process at the disposal site based on their resin type.
Bioplastic packaging could also be a new potential revenue stream that enables manufacturers to profit from materials it already has at hand: food waste. European researchers have developed bioplastic beverage packaging using wastewater from juice processing, specifically a concentration of fermentable sugars scientists use for the feedstock.
This type of process not only enables a company to reduce food waste within its supply chain, but it could also be a revenue driver for packaging used within its own operations or that the company sells to other manufacturers.