Alongside four other leading industrial players, L’Oréal, Nestlé Waters, PSA and Schneider Electric, Arkema partners the Bioplastics Chair created at the Mines Paris Tech school, launched officially on June 18th 2009.

Round-table debates with experts from the school and each of the five partner companies are being organized to mark the occasion, with a view to providing answers to the following questions:

• What are the benefits of bioplastics ?
• What constraints will sustainable bioplastics fulfil ?
• What applications do these high performance materials target ?

On the strength of its long-standing industrial experience in the use of raw materials of vegetable origin, Arkema, France’s leading chemicals producer, is a natural partner to this Bioplastics Chair. Arkema is indeed the world leader in castor oil chemistry, which produces in particular Rilsan® 11, the only high performance polyamide entirely derived from renewable raw materials.

Arkema continues to develop bio-sourced high performance polymers, and since 2007 has been marketing the first range of thermoplastic elastomers directly inspired by castor oil chemistry, Pebax® Rnew, which received the 2008 Pierre Potier award. Characterized by lower fossil energy requirements and lower CO2 emissions, the Pebax® Rnew range fits in naturally with the eco-design approach endorsed by many manufacturers, in particular in the electronics, medical, sports and automotive sectors, for their high added value products.

A global chemical company and France’s leading chemicals producer, Arkema consists of three businesses: Vinyl Products, Industrial Chemicals, and Performance Products. Arkema reports sales of 5.6 billion euros. Arkema has 15,000 employees in over 40 countries and six research centers located in France, the United States and Japan. With internationally recognized brands, Arkema holds leadership positions in its principal markets.