Sponsored By

At its 35 stores in South Australia, fast-food chain KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has tasked Cardia Bioplastics to supply it with takeout bags converted from Cardia's own patented Compostable material, a biodegradable plastic derived from plant starch. Cardio would not quantify the size of the KFC contract in terms of bags or tonnes/yr, but did say that increasing sales of Cardia Compostable and Cardia Biohybrid resins and finished products processed from the material encouraged the company to bring forward the expansion of its manufacturing facility in Nanjing, China.

MPW Staff

February 1, 2010

2 Min Read
Finger-lickin’ plastic packaging

At its 35 stores in South Australia, fast-food chain KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has tasked Cardia Bioplastics to supply it with takeout bags converted from Cardia's own patented Compostable material, a biodegradable plastic derived from plant starch. Cardio would not quantify the size of the KFC contract in terms of bags or tonnes/yr, but did say that increasing sales of Cardia Compostable and Cardia Biohybrid resins and finished products processed from the material encouraged the company to bring forward the expansion of its manufacturing facility in Nanjing, China.

NF_0202_KFCCompostableCardiaBioplastics.gif

KFC switched to compostable bags from Cardia Bioplastics at its 35 stores in South Australia.

The expansion will double manufacturing output there and accommodate the administration and sales team servicing the China market. At press time, MPW had not yet heard from the company with regard to its actual capacity at the Nanjing site.

The KFC announcement caused the publicly-traded Cardia to be the hottest property on Australia's stock exchange on the day of the announcement (Feb. 1), with its stock price jumping 31% (albeit in penny-stock land, with the increase taking it to Australian $0.026/share) and the stock being the most actively traded for the day.
 
Last autumn Cardia appointed H. Mühlstein & Co. as its distributor for the Americas, with three firms also tasked for regional distribution in Europe, and Unic Technologies handling it in Southeast Asia.

KFC's switch comes following the South Australian government's ban on very thin (i.e., "takeout"), non-compostable plastic bags in May 2009, and some other Australian state governments may soon follow suit with bans or limitations of their own. Cardia's materials meet international standards for compostability including Europe's EN 13432, the U.S.A.'s ASTM D 6400, Japan's GreenPla, and Australia's AS 4736-2006. —[email protected]

Sign up for the PlasticsToday NewsFeed newsletter.

You May Also Like