The PLA revolution
Danone makes it clear that the adoption of Ingeo applies to around 80% of the total volume of all Activia products currently on sale in Germany, and that it plans to extend the application of Ingeo-based packaging to encompass the other items in its Activia line - drinks, yogurt fruit puree and the larger consumer formats - that account for the remaining 20%. This should prove popular, if the yoghurt cup's warm reception at 2011's Interpack event is any indication.
asso von Pogrell, managing director of European Bioplastics, claimed that through the development and presentation of the new Danone Activia PLA yogurt cup "we suddenly are winning over a quite new clientele and bioplastics have thus finally managed to reach the consumer."
He says he is convinced that the Paris-headquartered multinational has helped trigger "a giant push for the entire industry. We are anticipating that production capacities will more than double in the next five years. Bioplastics will continue to conquer the markets, and particularly in the packaging segment."
However, the company has hinted that PLA is merely the beginning of it's sustainability drive. In early September a Haar-based spokesperson for Danone Germany, Dr. Susanne Knittel, described the material as being "only a stepping stone" and explained that as "an intermediate-term solution we would prefer other resources for our PLA-production, which are agriculturally less complex to produce, for instance Chinese silver grass, tapioca, prairie dropseed or agricultural by-products such as corn straw.