A cup of iced Americano we casually drink. It takes a staggering 500 years for that disposable cup to return to nature. Petroleum-based plastics, which once gifted humanity with ‘convenience’, have now become a non-decomposing boomerang—threatening our tables and ecosystems. Are ‘convenience’ and the ‘environment’ values that cannot coexist?
Here is someone offering an answer with PHA, a naturally derived material that disappears in soil and the ocean. It is Max Senechal, who leads global sales and marketing at CJ Biomaterials. In February, we met with Max during his business trip to Korea and talked about PHA, which is gaining attention as the new normal.
Q. Please introduce yourself.
Hello, I’m Max Senechal from CJ Biomaterials. I’ve worked in the chemical and materials industry for over 30 years, and I have dedicated the last 15 years specifically to the development of biomaterials. Currently, as the CCO (Chief Commercial Officer) of CJ Biomaterials, I oversee sales and marketing for the biodegradable material PHA brand, ‘PHACT’.
My work goes beyond simply selling products—I identify the suitable customers and applications and strengthen partnerships across the entire value chain. I focus on helping not only consumers but also a wide range of stakeholders understand what PHA is, and why CJ Biomaterials is the best partner—laying the groundwork for PHACT’s global expansion.
Q. Recently, CJ Biomaterials’ PHA was featured on CBS News in “Good news you may have missed in 2025.”
PHA, made by microbial fermentation of plant raw materials like sugarcane, was introduced as an innovative solution that leaves no persistent microplastics while maintaining the convenience of traditional petroleum-based materials. It reported as ‘good news’ that we’ve reached a stage where PHA can be produced at commercial scale.
In fact, the host, David Pogue, briefly covered PHA in a materials-related documentary in 2021. We didn’t miss that connection, and we explained how far the technology has progressed since then.
PHA has become a commercially available, practical solution, and through partners like Black Earth Compost, which was also featured in the story, it’s now possible to support large-scale collection and composting as well. That helped the message resonate. A natural narrative structure was created that ‘the technology that we briefly looked at a few years ago has now reached this point.’
PHA's characteristics— having utility like general plastics, being based on renewable raw materials, and completely biodegrading in various environments like paper or wood—were highly persuasive. These points made it a valuable story as 'good news.'
Q. You said PHA has reached the stage of mass production. In what areas is it being used?
PHA is already commercialized and can be found in various categories. For example, in Korea, Yuhan-Kimberly launched the ‘Kleenex Washable Biodegradable Sanitary Wipes’ using CJ Biomaterials’ PHA. They describe it as an innovative product not only in hygiene and convenience, but also in environmental terms.
In the U.S., TOUS les JOURS stores are using PHA-based straws. Also, U.S. packaging company Pregis introduced compostable frozen-food pouches using a PHA–PLA film structure. Because applying biomaterials can be especially challenging in low-temperature distribution environments, Pregis is a particularly meaningful case.
These examples clearly show that PHACT is an applicable material across diverse fields and brands.
Q. It must not have been easy until these commercialization cases emerged.
I think the biggest challenges were timing and economics— getting supply and demand to arrive at the same place at the same time.
The plastics industry is a massive ecosystem built primarily around petrochemical materials and has been optimized over the past 50–60 years. Biopolymers only began to emerge in the 2000s, and replacing incumbent materials was never going to be easy. PHA was a promising technology, but both waiting for market conditions to mature and scaling production to a cost-competitive level required tremendous patience and dedication.
But the situation has changed. CJ Biomaterials’ technology has broken through theoretical yield limitations, improving cost competitiveness, and global environmental regulations and shifting consumer awareness are converging. Just as solar and wind energy faced significant opposition and economic headwinds early on but ultimately became mainstream, I believe PHA is following a similar path.
The key was staying the course without losing direction—continuous investment, securing rigorous third-party certifications, building partnerships across the value chain, and communicating what PHA can actually do. I believe these outcomes came from pursuing all of that with confidence in the future.
Q. How far can PHA be applied?
To expand PHA’s application areas, we evaluate opportunities against several key criteria.
First, we confirm technical suitability—whether PHA can realistically be applied to the specific packaging or product. We also assess whether there is a true need for our material’s sustainability attributes—such as home compostability or marine biodegradability. We also look at whether solutions are needed for regulatory compliance in regions tightening environmental rules (like single-use plastic bans), such as the U.S. and Europe.
At the CJ Biomaterials Center of Excellence (COE) located in Woburn, Massachusetts, we work closely with compounders, converters, and brand owners from the earliest development stages. Rather than simply supplying PHA, we collaborate with customers by solving real processing and product-development challenges.
CJ Biomaterials holds both amorphous (aPHA) and semi-crystalline (scPHA) PHA technologies, which enables a wide range of solution designs. We plan to focus on flexible packaging, food-service items such as straws and cutlery, rigid thermoformed containers, nonwovens for hygiene products, artificial-turf infill, and compostable paper-based packaging where a compostable barrier coating is needed.
Our conversation with Max made it clear that PHA is no longer a dreamlike material of the distant future. It is already taking root in our daily lives and moving steadily through the stages of commercialization. We will be cheering for the wave of change led by CJ Biomaterials to expand across more industries and brands—so that PHA can become the New Normal of the industry.
