Introduction
The business plan aims to influence the world using the technology our project researched and the additional information we obtained about how to produce starch-based biodegradable plastics. Although our main research about sweet potato genes is only part of the business plan, our project aims to connect resources and other researchers to allow our research to actually impact the world positively and improve the environment we live in. This plan will allow us to earn money by operating our research technology, and use the money we earn to continue to invest in our business. As the size of the business grows bigger, we can allow more biodegradable plastics to substitute the normal plastics now, improving the earth’s atmosphere on a visible scale.
1 Overview of business plan
Our plan follows the flow chart Fig.1, which indicates the overall procedure from growing the sweet potatoes to selling the plastic products at last. These processes will expect us to work with farmers and other organizations, but we will provide the technology support and take control of the manufacturing part, allowing more people to participate and therefore increasing the efficiency and production at last.
Fig.1 Flow chart of the business plan
2 Essential technology
The two essential technologies that support our business are the transgenesis of sweet potato plantations and starch-based biodegradable plastic manufacturing.
The gene in the sweet potatoes we edited must be replicable no matter whether through editing normal sweet potatoes or reproducing the special sweet potato we have. This allows us to gain pure amylopectin as much as we need. When the consumer tells us their expectations of the plastic we need to make, we would calculate the ratio of amylose and amylopectin and the supplements needed. We will have enough amylopectin and normal sweet potato starch to produce almost all the ratios that we need to provide because normal sweet potatoes already have a pretty high amylose content compared to the other plants.
The starch-based biodegradable plastic is the main product of our business, which should be advantageous compared to biodegradable plastics now. This is because we can easily change the ratio of amylose and amylopectin, which allows a wider variety of physical properties our plastic is able to have. We have to develop a mathematical model that models the relationship between physical properties and the amylose, amylopectin, and supplements. This would be an essential advantage we are relying on to sell, which is creating big importance for our sweet potatoes.
3 Targeted market
Our target market focuses on both parts of our business plan, sweet potatoes and plastic products. Whereas sweet potatoes focus more on the geographical location and local community and plastic focuses more on the consumer community and the supporting policy.
Sandy loam is the type of soil in which sweet potatoes are most suitable to be planted. They are densely separated in the Northeastern, Southwestern, and Southeastern parts of China, which provides us with a large extent of choices to choose from, and there must be places where exporting fresh food is hard and tiring. We can build factories beside these places and turn the sweet potatoes directly into starch or plastics at that place. Then transport them to a bigger transportation station for further purpose. This will create work opportunities for people living in poor areas and they don’t need to leave their homes and children. This will benefit a considerable amount of people so there tends to be a huge opportunity for this to happen.
Biodegradable plastics tend to have a small market compared to the whole plastic market but still own a considerable amount of consumers in China. This is because normal plastics have a huge advantage in cost and amount, which biodegradable plastics can’t even near now. The only market that biodegradable plastics share is a big part of food packaging, which doesn’t require mechanical properties and focuses on health. There are specific policies in China indicating that some types of plastic are prohibited, and plastics related to food are encouraged to be biodegradable. Plastic products such as straws, forks knives, and take-out boxes are already using biodegradable plastics to a huge percentage. We can join to produce products such as water bottles which haven’t been completely occupied by biodegradable plastics. Then aim to produce starch-based plastics with better mechanical characteristics and produce units of objects that require special physical properties but need to be thrown away in a short period of time.
4 Start off
To start the sweet potato plantation, we surveyed a student from Xian, Shanxi province in China. We started off by analyzing the cost of planting sweet potatoes and how much profit they need to plant our sweet potatoes instead of the original ones. Fig.2 is a picture of the data we used.
We will research the simplest combination of starch-based plastic, and adjust the amount of ingredients used for producing the final plastic. Based on these results, we would start to combine more complicated particles together to get plastic with better mechanical properties, which can adapt to more scenarios.
Find a company or industry that already has the machines to produce the plastic we finalized in the research. We will gain some money by buying back sweet potatoes from the farmers who bought our sweet potato sprouts. Then extract the starch, and modify it into plastics to sell.
Find small companies who need our plastic and build a relationship with them. Make sure that we can sell enough plastics to gain money for the next stage.
Fig.2 cost of planting sweet potatoes
5 Mid-term development
Find more places where they are willing to buy our sweet potato sprouts and build a long-term connection with us. Develop more sweet potato sprouts that are enough for the total need.
Test and explore more recipes for starch-based plastics. We should have built a simple mathematical model that predicts the recipe when consumers tell us their expectations. More types of plastics are used to prepare for the increasingly specific needs.
After the recipes have been nailed down, we will consider what difficulties will large scale face that don’t occur in laboratories based on the machines we have borrowed from other industries. After determining what types of machines will work the best, we will start to build industries besides the plantations, which will benefit the workers and the production as well.
6 Further assumption
After the consumption in separate areas has reached an expected line, we can start to analyze a general plan that copies this model and is able to operate in most of the areas in China, and worldwide. This might require some differences due to the geographical, cultural, and economic differences among different places. But the basic model will be reconsidered and bring starch-based biodegradable plastics to more places in our lives.
7 SWOT analysis
Strengths
The most popular starch that manufactures starch-based plastics is corn starch. It has been known for its wide availability and cheap price. However, compared to cornstarch, the price of sweet potato starch is clearly cheaper. Cornstarch costs 970$ per ton, whereas sweet potato starch only costs 616$ per ton. Therefore, it is more profitable to produce plastics using sweet potato starch compared to cornstarch.
Even corn can also change its amylose to amylopectin ratio through simple agriculture techniques, it is not as productive as mixing pure amylopectin with normal sweet potato as this only requires two plants and we can plant as many as we want. Compared to corn, which needs a lot of work to change the ratio, and is very hard to achieve the right amount.
Weaknesses
Compared to the normal plastics manufactured from petroleum, starch-based biodegradable plastics are still too expensive. The price of petroleum is much cheaper than starch, and the technology of petroleum plastics is far more mature than biodegradable plastics. From the perspective of practicality and mechanical properties, there is no way biodegradable plastics can win over normal plastics. There’s not enough research on biodegradable plastics since it is very new, and the profit is not huge enough to attract too many people.
Opportunity
Although the properties of starch-based biodegradable plastics are not good enough, the sustainability and eco-friendly characteristics win the battle of creating a better world. With countries and society realizing how much damage normal plastic will do to the earth, the market and policies supported biodegradable plastics to a degree. This means that there will be an opportunity for us to get support from the government and society instead of the market and economy. Which is also a way to impact the world positively and grow the business.
Threats
Due to the idea and value that biodegradable plastics sell, and the support of governments and the society, companies and professors have already researched this topic beyond our level and built connections to impact the world through this. It is definitely impossible if we have any technology advantages compared to them. So, the only way to stand out is to make connections through different areas and gather their advantages together. If we can organize these information and build a plan that gathers more advantages, then we might be available to grow this business and allow it to affect the world positively.