Recently, PCI Magazine interviewed Patrick Van Waes, the Global Marketing Director for Primient Covation LLC, to explore the dynamic growth and future prospects of bio-based materials in the coatings industry. Van Waes discusses the market's development over the past decade, the rising demand for sustainable alternatives, and the evolving performance of bio-based materials compared to their petroleum-based counterparts. He also addresses common misconceptions and outlines the potential future trajectory for bio-based products in coatings, highlighting the company's commitment to innovation and sustainability.

PCI: What has growth been like in the bio-based materials market over the last decade? 

Van Waes: Over the past 10 years, many developments took place in either developing new bio-based building blocks or using existing bio-based building blocks like our Susterra^® 1,3-propanediol (PDO) in various applications. Replacing petroleum-based materials with renewable materials has been high on the radar of the coatings industry, but to combine sustainability with performance and cost has been an ongoing challenge given the cheap petroleum alternatives from an established industry where assets have been written off multiple times. A big focus also has been on packaging, since waste and packaging are a first consideration by most industries and paint cans are a logical first move. Today, the focus of paint and resin companies has been shifting to investigate how bio-based renewables can be incorporated in the portfolio. Several additive producers, for instance, are looking to establish a new range of bio-based alternatives to mirror their current petroleum-based portfolio.

PCI: Have you seen a surge in customer requests?

Van Waes: With companies developing their Sustainable Standards Goals, which stipulate certain percentage levels of renewables and carbon footprint reductions by 2030 in most cases, the request (and need) for bio-based renewable materials has been substantial. 2030 seems far, but if a target of 25% needs to be reached by 2030 the sense of urgency is growing since developments take time, and companies can only work on a certain range of their portfolio. 

Replacing petroleum-based materials with bio-based renewables, therefore, takes time and R&D efforts since there is seldom a drop-in replacement. Several paint companies have established separate sustainable R&D groups or appointed sustainability coordinators to activate and fast forward their efforts using a more-focused approach. This will surely accelerate the adoption in the coming years. Some companies, like ours, made big strives to showcase and communicate the opportunity to shift to bio-based alternatives. Investing in paint and resin research, and proving performance in several applications has been very helpful.

PCI: How have bio-based materials, themselves, evolved in recent years? Have there been strides in improving their performance compared to petroleum-based materials?

Van Waes: As mentioned earlier, bio-based materials are seldom a pure drop-in replacement. Therefore, to get same or better performance, companies’ R&D teams have to take this on as a research program in most cases. Today, most companies understand this and take bio-based building blocks and materials as an opportunity to develop a new range of environmentally friendly products with specific performance parameters catering to the needs of the customers and applications. The purity and consistency of bio-based building blocks has been improved a lot with the optimization of fermentation techniques and filtration. For instance our PDO product has a minimum purity of 99.7%

PCI: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about bio-based materials?

Van Waes: One big misconception is that the bio-based materials could be in conflict with growing food because they need agricultural land. Today’s renewable and regenerative farming of industrial dent corn in the United States, for instance, is done on less acres than before World War II, with better yields, due to better techniques. These high yields is what our bio-based circular economy will require.

Another misconception is that consumers are not willing to pay a higher price for bio-based offerings. A market study we requested via a third party in footwear in the United States clearly showcased that the consumer is very willing to buy plant-based products, and is willing to pay a substantial premium as long as the sustainability benefits are explained well. This is where today’s consumer brands are lacking; providing the proper information and education to their customers.

PCI: How are bio-based materials, like the products that your company makes, incorporated into coatings?

Van Waes: Our Susterra PDO, for example, can be used in two ways. Either as a building block to produce polyols and resins, or as a bio-based co-solvent. The route as monomer building block is obvious in the production of PUDs for direct-to-metal and wood coatings, but in the production of epoxy polyesters for powder coatings there have also been great results in both performance and easier production of powder coatings. As a co-solvent, an important benefit when replacing other glycols, is a slightly longer open time in architectural coatings. A property that is becoming more challenging, lately.

PCI: What do you see as the future of bio-based products for coatings?

Van Waes: The coatings industry will quickly shift in the coming years to bio-based products because that is the only direction that will make the coatings industry compliant with efforts to move away from petroleum-based materials by 2050. Recycling is good for packaging, but the used raw materials in the production of coatings themselves are impossible to recycle. We also need to realize that by 2050, we do not only need to replace current petroleum-based feedstock used today, but that double amount of materials will be needed to fulfill future growth with a growing global population and growing middle class, which will require more consumer goods. A study nicely summarized by the Nova institute touches on this. 

You can notice today, already, the increasing investments in the bio-based building blocks production. We as Primient Covation LLC operating as CovationBio|PDO also have our investment plan ready.