Telles Expands Mirel Bioplastics Product Line for Food Contact Applications

Metabolix, Inc. (NASDAQ: MBLX) and Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) today announced that their joint venture Telles has launched Mirel™ F3002, a thermoforming grade for use in food contact applications. This extends Mirel’s product range in the food service and food packaging market sector.
Mirel F3002 thermoforming grade is now available for use in non-alcoholic food contact applications. The conditions of use range from frozen food storage to boiling water up to 212°F, including microwave reheating. Mirel’s bioplastic thermoforming grade is suitable for a wide range of thermoformed food service and packaging applications including cold and hot cups, cup lids, yogurt containers, tubs and trays for meats and vegetables, condiment cups and other single-serve and disposable food packaging. The material is suitable for storage as well as food service.

“Food contact applications represent a tremendous opportunity for Mirel and this food compliant thermoforming grade opens up a number of packaging applications for our bioplastics,” said Bob Engle, General Manager of Telles. “Mirel’s physical performance properties—the range of modulus, heat and water resistance—are comparable to petroleum-based plastics, but Mirel is biobased and biodegradable. These unique properties enable a wide range of alternative disposal options for the food industry, including composting and anaerobic digestion, that can help to divert waste that would otherwise be sent to landfills. These disposal options also help to
create valuable secondary market products such as compost and biogas.”
According to Plastics Today, the U.S. thermoforming market was approximately five billion pounds in 2008, growing at 4.3 percent per year. Telles estimates that about 70 percent of this demand is in food contact applications.

Mirel bioplastics will be on display at the Metabolix booth (# 5D10-6A) at the K Show 2010, taking place from October 27 - November 3 in Dusseldorf, Germany.

About Mirel Bioplastics
Mirel is a family of bioplastic materials that have physical properties comparable to petroleumbased resins, yet are biobased and biodegradable in natural soil and water environments, in home composting systems, and in industrial composting facilities where such facilities are available. The rate and extent of Mirel’s biodegradability will depend on the size and shape of the articles made from it. However, like nearly all bioplastics and organic matter, Mirel is not designed to biodegrade in conventional landfills.
Commercial grades of Mirel are available for injection molding, thermoforming, sheet extrusion, and film applications. Telles is the joint venture between Metabolix and Archer Daniels Midland that is commercializing Mirel bioplastics. For more information please visit www.mirelplastics.com.

About Metabolix
Founded in 1992, Metabolix, Inc. is an innovation-driven bioscience company focused on providing sustainable solutions for the world’s needs for plastics, chemicals and energy. The Company is taking a systems approach, from gene to end product, integrating sophisticated biotechnology with advanced industrial practice. Metabolix is now developing and commercializing Mirel™, a family of high performance bioplastics which are biobased and biodegradable alternatives to many petroleum based plastics. Metabolix is also developing a proprietary platform technology for co-producing plastics, chemicals and energy, from crops such as switchgrass, oilseeds and sugarcane.
For more information, please visit www.metabolix.com. (MBLX-G)

About ADM
Every day, the 29,000 people of Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) turn crops into renewable products that meet the demands of a growing world. At more than 240 processing plants, we convert corn, oilseeds, wheat and cocoa into products for food, animal feed, chemical and energy uses. We operate the world’s premier crop origination and transportation network, connecting crops and markets in more than 60 countries. Our global headquarters is in Decatur, Illinois, and our net sales for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, were $62 billion. For more information about our company and our products, visit www.adm.com

Source: http://www.mirelplastics.com/