Cafédirect launched a food-grade polypropylene pod, which is recyclable anywhere that accepts mixed plastics, and works continuously with the manufacturer to develop and reduce the pod packaging.
Joint-ventures included, it has the capacity to make 8m tonnes a year of polypropylene and 2.5m of polyethylene; many more specialised products; turnover of almost $9 billion; and profits, though unrevealed, that have certainly been solid of late, for all the high cost of its ultimate raw materials, oil and natural gas.
A chunk of the $9 billion it is spending on its oil-refining venture will be on plants to make fertiliser and polypropylene, a versatile plastic, from the refined crude.
The price of polypropylene, a versatile polymer, is soaring.
In emerging Asia and the Middle East, demand for polypropylene reflects increasing consumption of goods (which either incorporate polypropylene, or are packaged in it) and rising car ownership.But there is another, more subtle effect.
While this happens, the polypropylene fumarate becomes integrated with the body thanks to protein fragments called peptides placed on its surface.
Most surprising and curious of all may be a white shopping trolley, the first to be "made of single mould-injected polypropylene".
Having added a plant in Jamnagar in the state of Gujarat, RIL can now make over 1m tonnes of polypropylene a year at keen prices, commanding 70% of the Indian market.
In Europe this has meant joint ventures for polyethylene (with Shell) and polypropylene (with Hoechst); outside Europe it has entailed investing in big new plants in places like China.Bayer, the third sister, resembles Hoechst in its mix of businesses, but manages them more like BASF.
In a spiralling continuum, they are discarded and gathered in, melted down to their polypropylene essence, and re-moulded in some new plastic form.
Carpetright, a British retailer, blamed rising polypropylene costs, among other things, for the drop in profits it reported earlier this month.As for most commodities, the "China effect" is part of the story.
