Dec 14 2007
Cereplast, Inc., manufacturer of proprietary bio-based, sustainable plastics, won the inaugural AUTOPLAST SPEICON award for the Highest Contribution in Plastic Material Development Used in the Auto Industry. The award was presented yesterday by the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) at AUTOPLAST 2007 in Mumbai, India. It recognizes outstanding achievements in the development of new plastics technology for automotive applications.
Cereplast earned the honor for its recently launched BiopropyleneTM product from the Cereplast Hybrid ResinsTM family. BiopropyleneTM, the world’s first sustainable polypropylene, replaces 50 percent or more of the petroleum-based content of conventional polypropylene resins with renewable resources such as cornstarch, tapioca or other starches.
Dr. Shriram Bagrodia, Ph.D, senior vice president and director of research and development, received the SPEICON award on behalf of Cereplast from Mrs. Vicki Flaris, global president of SPE. The award ceremony was attended by more than 200 engineers and business representatives from the plastic and automotive industries. The theme of this year’s AUTOPLAST conference was "Plastics: Driving Automotive Growth".
Also at the conference, a paper co-authored by Vicky Flaris and Shriram Bagrodia was presented. The title of the paper was "Advanced Materials from Novel Bio-based Hybrid Resins".
In addition to its Hybrid Resin family, Cereplast also offers Cereplast Compostables™ resins. Cereplast Compostables resins are nearly 100 percent bio-based, and are fully biodegradable and compostable meeting BPI (Biodegradable Products Institute) standards for compostability (ASTM 6400 D99 and ASTM 6868), and European Bioplastics standards (EN 13432). In February 2007, Cereplast received the 2007 Environmental Award for New Technology in Materials from the SPE, which recognized the advancement in technology Cereplast brought to the industry for its work on the Cereplast Compostables™ resins.
All Cereplast resins are cost-competitive with their traditional plastics counterparts, making them an economic as well an environmentally sustainable solution.
“It’s an honor to receive this award from the Society of Plastics Engineers,” said Frederic Scheer, CEO and president of Cereplast. “It’s a significant milestone for a bio-plastic company to receive this recognition and it shows how environmentally conscious this industry has become. We are especially grateful and excited as it demonstrates now that bioplastics are becoming a mainstream reality for the plastic industry and I want to formally thank the various companies that have supported our work, especially in the automotive sector.”
In response to strong demand for its products, Cereplast also announced a new manufacturing facility this week. Production will begin at the new facility in Indiana in 2008, and is expected to expand capacity to a half billion pounds annually once fully operational in 2010.