Minneapolis-based Cargill Dow LLC held a grand opening April 2 for the world's first global-scale manufacturing facility capable of making commercial-grade plastic resins from annually renewable resources such as ordinary field corn.

NatureWorks™ polylactide (PLA) and NatureWorks™ fibers represent a shift to a future where the raw material, the carbon source, is derived from annually renewable resources rather than limited fossil resources used to make most conventional plastics. Cargill Dow's products will be shipped worldwide for use in clothing, food packaging and bedding, and will be competing with traditional petroleum-based plastics head-to-head on performance and price.

Encompassing more than 16 acres of Missouri River bottomland in Blair, NE, Cargill Dow's new facility stands on a site that was once, itself, a cornfield. The plant is capable of producing more than 300 million lbs (140,000 metric tons) of NatureWorks PLA per year and uses up to 40,000 bushels of locally grown corn per day as the raw material for the manufacturing process.

In essence, the facility harvests the carbon naturally stored in simple plant sugars when a plant, in this case corn, undergoes the process of photosynthesis. Through a process of simple fermentation and distillation, Cargill Dow is able to extract the carbon and use it as the basic building block for commercial-grade plastics and fibers. In contrast to traditional thermoplastics that rely on the earth's limited supply of petroleum as a base feedstock, the company is using raw materials that are annually grown and in abundant supply.