Cambond adds hardboard to its sustainable product range

Cambond, the developer of a plant-based resin for adhesive formulations and biomaterials composites, is scaling up production of its reusable coffee cups – and has added a new hardwood product to its range which could be used for floorboards and furniture.

Speaking of the production scale-up of its reusable coffee cups, Cambond’s head of business development Dr Gareth Roberts said: “We now have a small manufacturing plant; we’ve made the product, tested it, and it works. We are scaling up. We are now on 10,000 tons of product a year and our aim is to quadruple capacity over the next two years.”

The Cambridge-based company’s technology can also be used for agricultural waste such as straw, fruit and vegetables to provide a replacement for plastics.

Dr Roberts explains: “We have developed a bioadhesive that can replace the toxic urea-formaldehyde glues that are widely used in the construction industry to make plywood and fibre boards.

“Not only are these glues oil-based and give off noxious vapours during their energy intensive formation, but they continue to release these toxins after construction, contributing to ‘sick building syndrome’.

“Our technology platform can make bioresins that are safe, low carbon and environmentally sustainable.”

Cambond’s resin is made from dried distiller’s grains and solutes (DDGS), a by-product of whisky distillation or bioethanol production and widely used as an animal feed, so it is a familiar ingredient in agriculture.

The resin can be combined with straws, nutshells, pineapple tops, used coffee grounds, palm oil-wastes and other agricultural by-products to produce biocomposite construction materials such as MDF-type boards.

The company’s carbon-neutral WasBeans coffee cup “looks and feels like heavy-duty plastic but is made from 30 per cent coffee grounds, 68 per cent bio-resin and biodegradable polymer, and a splash of recyclable silicone to ensure it is watertight”.

Another application is 100 per cent biomass moulded or formed products like plates, trays and bowls. The bioresin can be used to make an excellent alternative to plastics like melamine or polypropylene and has been shown to meet US FDA and EU requirements for food safety.

Cambond has set up a development facility at the NIAB Innovation Hub in Soham, where it is able to demonstrate these innovative materials to potential customers and partners.

The Soham facility has made another breakthrough with the hardboard solution.

“The paper industry produces 1million tonnes of waste a year,” says Dr Roberts. “That’s the bits left over after the process of recycling for paper-making.”

These “bits” have hitherto been waste – but Cambond has found a way to make use of them.

“This 1m tons a year is usually burned or turned into landfill, it’s not used for anything else, and people are looking for something to do with it that’s commercially sensible,” explains Dr Roberts. “We are using our technology to turn this broken-down residue into useful products, such as cladding or hardboard for flooring.

“We’ve made some lab-based samples and are just about to start a project with a bigger organisation. We’ve produced the sample boards and the idea now is to scale up the process.”

Cambond, a member of Cambridge Cleantech, was founded in 2014 by Cambridge-based entrepreneurs Dr Xiaobin Zhao and Dr Roberts.

Its sustainable adhesives targets a core industrial commodity used extensively in the construction, packaging, automotive and aerospace industries. Adhesives have a global market of £34bn (for 2013) and 13 million tonnes of adhesives are manufactured annually.

The glue from the byproduct of paper waste can be used to turn the waste into hardboard within a day – “as fast as you can get it on to the production line”.

Opportunities for production at scale for both the reusable coffee cup and the hardboard are available to interested parties.