B4PNOW
B4Plastics will launch two first proprietary polymer families with the B4PNOW project.
About B4Plastics
B4Plastics (B4P) is a polymer architecture company, catalysing the introduction of novel bio-materials, and growing them from niche to dominant bulk applications.
In 2020, the world exceeded the average production of 1 Mio ton of plastic every day, over 50% of which is for single-use purposes-utilized for just a few moments, but remaining on the planet for at least several hundreds of years. Plastics are getting under our skin. Literally. B4P’s Polymer design offers a solution as it allows for circularity “on demand”: if the afterlife allows it, we design it to be recycled. On the other hand, if the after-life situation demands it (if it will end up as pollution), we design it to completely degrade, triggered by its specific end-of-life situation.
Work performed in First Project Year and main results achieved so far
In the past year, B4Plastics has been working on scaling the facilities, B4P Polymers and the organization in general. This has resulted in the following achievements so far:
• The Polymer Architecture lab expanded in 2020, a New Biotech lab opened up in Q2 2021 and the B4Plastics Pilot Facilities enlarged.
• This enabled B4P to produce multi-kg test quantities in-house.
• More specifically, it allowed B4Plastics to validate the properties of FortePlastics, that supported a more sustainable launch of customers in a broad range of applications, from yarns to injection moulded engineering parts.
• In parallel, the B4Plastics team has grown from 11 to 20 people, and a renown Advisory board for Operations, Sales and Finance & Administration has been installed.
Future Progress and Impact of B4PNOW
The B4PNOW project has pushed progress at B4Plastics beyond the state of the art. B4P Polymers have beaten world records in strength versus degradation: despite being completely biodegradable in a controlled way ranging from years to even days, the biopolymers are designed for the highest mechanical strength, outcompeting fossil materials like traditional polyesters and polyamides.
B4P Polymers, completely aligned with the European Green Deal, are becoming game-changers in the plastic industry with an unprecedented balance in cost, performance, and ecology.
This allows B4Plastics to prevent 8 million tons of plastic waste that results in 1,5 million ton of micro-plastics leaking into the ocean, yearly. And exactly for this reason, on 18th November 2021, B4Plastics was selected as winner of the world’s biggest environmental prize, the 2021 Curt Bergfors Food Planet Prize.
The B4PNOW project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101010454.
