Bioplastic shift. Balrampur Chini hopes success of polylactic acid plant will be sweet

Barot: The market is small in India, and it is difficult to understand why. Because the imports are not reflecting the reality. 

You only measure what comes as a neat product and even that is sometimes misclassified. Besides that, a lot of it is coming in as a compound or a finished product, which is not properly reported. We assume that the market for PLA right now is roughly 20,000 tonnes. 

The market’s full potential remains unrealised, caught between the need for local production and effective legislative support. When we look at where PLA can be used or will be used, then the market is very big. India banned 19 categories of single-use plastics. PLA and its compounds can replace most of these items. So, for us the market will be growing very fast in the future. 

Saraogi: We intend to establish a greenfield PLA plant in Uttar Pradesh with a production capacity of 75,000 tonnes per annum as a forward integration measure. 

I would say that the headroom for the single-use plastics (SUP) market is basically 5-5.5 million tonnes, even if we say that PLA obviously cannot be the solution for every single usage.

PLA can easily be used for all the rigid application and some percentage of the flexible application. 

So, in a very conservative scenario, PLA could actually replace 25-35 per cent of single-use plastics, performing much better than existing non-plastic solutions like paper, wood, glass, cloth. 

If the demand stimulation can come from either legislation or the consciousness of consumers and brands, then one can scale up the operation. Then PLA would be a better performing material at the same cost, and perhaps even less in the future. 

We need some support from the government to create the demand and hopefully make expansions to harness economies of scale. If these things happen, then the sky is the limit. 

It is an infinitely stretchable market for us. We will be using less than 10 per cent of BCML’s sugar production for making PLA. 

Saraogi: We are looking at fiscal support in terms of incentives and subsidies. 

China’s aggressive PLA production capacity building has led to an abundance of supply, making it a dominant player in the global market. 

So, we are looking for some import barrier to create a level playing field... to stimulate the Indian bioplastics market. Also, support from the government is required to strictly impose the single-use plastics ban, in terms of setting up a regulatory framework and monitoring. 

Barot: Direct buyers of our materials will be compounders and converters. However, we will have to reach out to the brand owners who are the decision-makers for the end-products using our PLA, and we have already reached out to many of the high-level brand owners. 

We are trying to establish connections with all the big companies where we see a need. 

So, we are talking to big players and decision-makers in various industries. We still have two years to go. The industrial bioplastic plant will be the first in India. It is also the first in the world where, in one location, we go from sugarcane to polylactic acid and use renewable energy to fuel the plant. It will reduce our logistic cost. 

Barot: We made an announcement in February this year that the plant will be up and running within 30 months. We will broadly be able to keep that schedule. So, roughly two years from now, in the middle of 2026. 

Our PLA venture is a risk diversification, so that the company can better maximise the value stream. We like to remain the first mover and a sizeable player in the Indian bioplastics market.