Mazda to Use Corn based Bioplastic

As if the corn market needed even more bullish news (CBOT corn contracts for delivery this year were up between 10 ½ to 11 ¼ cents a bushel today) the hits just keep coming. They say that a bull market needs to be fed; well the corn market has been getting fed. This morning the Autoblog reported that Mazda and a Japanese industrial consortium in cooperation with the Japanese government and Japanese academia have come up with a better plastic. Using only 12% petroleum the bioplastic will be less energy intensive to produce and will have superior heat resistance and rigidity than polypropylene. Stuart Waterman of the Autoblog wrote:

The prototype bioplastic is made of 88 percent corn and 12 percent petroleum, and requires 30 percent less energy to produce than conventional petroleum-based polypropylene plastics. Its higher rigidity may make it a superior material to polypropylene plastics for mass production of injection molded parts.

Lately the talk in the corn market has been about the aggressive buying of deeply deferred contracts like December ’07 and December ’08. That buying has centered on ideas of dramatically increased ethanol usage in future years. Mazda may very well have added to the world’s usage of corn. Waterman also wrote that Mazda claims that the Hiroshima-based effort was aided by the fermentation expertise of local sake makers.