Monsanto halts bio-plastics venture
Friday, February 5, 1999
By Robert Steyer
Of The Post-Dispatch
In a case that shows success in the lab doesn't guarantee success in the
marketplace, Monsanto Co. has canceled the development of plastics from
bacteria and plants.
The company has halted a biotechnology venture that was an intriguing fusion of
environmentalism and business, using biotechnology -- instead of petroleum
derivatives -- to create plastics.
"Acceptance lagged in key markets," said Diane Herndon, a company
spokeswoman. "At this point, the marketing dynamics would have to change."
At a time when Monsanto is cutting some research following last fall's failed
merger with American Home Products Corp., the plants-into-plastics and
bacteria-into-plastics projects became casualties of cold, hard economics.
Monsanto had sold some bacteria-derived plastics used in credit cards and
liners of paper cups. But given the low price of petroleum and the high cost of
this alternative plastic, Monsanto stopped taking orders and conducting
research at the end of last year.
"Over the past year, we have been looking for a strategic partner, but we
couldn't find one," Herndon said. "We are talking to potential buyers for our
technology."
Until then, the technology will remain on the shelf at Monsanto, where 45 of the
50 people who worked on the projects have been reassigned to other jobs.
Having sold or spun off traditional plastics businesses in recent years, Monsanto
entered the non-traditional plastics business in April 1996 when it bought
Biopol, a tiny firm owned by the British life science giant Zeneca Group.
Since 1990, Biopol had been creating polymers from a common bacterium
found in soil and water. The company developed a fermentation process to
make the bacterium produce more polymers.
Monsanto continued Biopol's fermentation work. It also worked on ways to
insert genes from this bacterium into plants, such as wild mustard and canola.
The goal: turn the plants into polymer-making "factories."
When Monsanto bought Biopol, it said this research had to reach certain goals
within a few years for the company to continue its work. "If we don't meet
them," an executive said 18 months ago, "we will terminate the project."
But the cost of making bacteria-based plastics through fermentation was
about $4 a pound, or 10 times the cost of making plastics from petroleum
products, Herndon said. And even though Monsanto had hoped the
bioengineered
plant factories could make plastics for 60 cents to 80 cents a pound, that
prospect was "still five to seven years away," she said.
Copyright (c) 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
stlnet.com |
