One Word for the Chemical Industry’s Future: Corn

Were they remaking the 1967 film “The Graduate” today, the one word of career advice to young Benjamin Braddock from an older family friend would no longer be “plastics.” It would be “biotechnology.”

At a factory in Nebraska, Cargill Dow, a joint venture of the agricultural giant Cargill Inc. and Dow Chemical Co., is making a plastic and fiber material called Ingeo from corn. In turn, Ingeo is being used to manufacture food packaging and blankets. In North Carolina and Illinois, DuPont Inc. is using corn to produce a new fiber for clothing and carpeting called Sorona.

This is the start of something big. The production of fibers and plastics from natural substances promises to be a major step forward for the chemical industry, a break with half a century of practice.

Executives speak of it in missionary tones. “This is a move toward sustainable development for the chemical industry,” says John Ranieri, head of DuPont’s Bio-Based Materials business unit. The advantage of using renewable resources, Ranieri explains, is enormous: “No net new carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.”

It may not be generally known, but the familiar products that find their origins in the chemical industry -- from plastic forks to plumbing systems, from food wrapping to designer clothing -- have building blocks made by transforming the carbon molecules of oil and natural gas.

But when companies work with petrochemicals, carbon dioxide becomes a waste product -- and a huge source of global warming. By contrast, plants such as corn and soybeans grow by combining carbon dioxide, sunlight and water. They form a closed loop in which carbon dioxide recycles into the creation of new plant life. So when plastics are made by taking the carbon out of corn and other crops -- a complex procedure involving the manipulation of enzymes -- there is no waste to worry about.

There is, then, a noble purpose behind the research that has led to Ingeo and Sorona. Yet make no mistake: The DuPont and Cargill Dow projects are business ventures, not philanthropic or public relations exercises designed to impress environmentalists and regulators.

The great mass of chemical industry products that once were wonders of technology -- polyethylene, polyester, propylene and others -- have long become commodities in oversupply around the world. It is hard to make a profit simply by turning out more of them.

But the chemistry of working with plant life to derive new materials promises fresh products -- and opportunities. “Ingeo fibers are terrific to weave, superior to wool and cotton and even to petrochemical acrylic,” says Michael Harris, head of Faribault Woolen Mills, a Minneapolis company that is providing an initial outlet for Ingeo.

Indeed, experts see rapid growth for biotechnology-assisted processes. A study by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that $280 billion worth of chemical products will come from corn and the like by the end of this decade. That’s projected to account for 20% of the worldwide chemical industry’s total sales, up from just a few percentage points now.

To make all this happen, DuPont and others are reaching out to biotech pioneers. In developing Sorona, for example, DuPont has worked with Genencor International Inc., a Palo Alto-based company that was spun off from Genentech Inc. in 1982 to handle the agricultural and industrial applications of biotechnology. Genencor provided counseling and knowledge of genetic structures to the 200-year-old chemical behemoth, developer of landmark products such as nylon, Lycra and Mylar.

“We’re seeing the transformation of chemicals into a bio-based industry,” says Michael Arbige, Genencor’s chief technology officer.

Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont also is part of an Energy Department-funded consortium that is aiming to develop a “bio-refinery” capable of producing ethanol fuel and valuable chemicals from renewable resources. Diversa Corp., a San Diego biotechnology firm that works with Dow Chemical, is part of that effort.

Dow, the Midland, Mich.-based chemical producer best known for plastics, has a partnership with Diversa to develop natural enzymes for Procter & Gamble Co. laundry detergents. And in 1997, Dow entered the joint venture with Cargill to develop Ingeo and other products yet to come.

Minneapolis-based Cargill, with more than $50 billion in annual revenue, is the world’s largest trader and processor of grain. In 1998, it started a research program to find new uses for corn beyond giving picnickers a sweet summer treat. “When I joined Cargill from graduate school,” says Patrick Gruber, chief technology officer of Cargill Dow who has a doctorate in chemistry, “I was told to think about fibers and plastics.”

One result is the Ingeo factory -- a $300-million investment -- that has begun production by using corn kernels as raw material.

“We have our costs competitive with petrochemicals now,” Gruber says, adding that he looks forward to a cost advantage when the facility begins to consume corn stalks and husks as well.

Gruber also sees geographic implications to the chemical industry’s shift to agricultural feedstocks. More factories are likely to be erected in the Farm Belt, providing sorely needed jobs. “Rural areas all over the world are excited,” Gruber says.

So, too, should everyone from environmentalists to consumers to tomorrow’s Benjamin Braddocks.

James Flanigan can be reached at jim.flanigan @latimes.com.