Can biobased plastic go in the oven? Ubite and Rodenburg say yes!

UBITE & Rodenburg Biopolymers | 2026

We all know them: the plastic plates, trays and cups on aeroplanes, in canteens or at festivals. Convenient, lightweight and affordable. Yet they are made from fossil oil, a polluting and finite raw material source. There is another way. And there must be another way.

The problem with biobased plastic

Plastic tableware for the catering industry must meet strict requirements: heat-resistant, lightweight, durable and affordable. In practice, this means ceramics and porcelain are ruled out, and fossil plastic wins. Biobased alternatives do exist, such as PLA made from sugars derived from maize or sugarcane, but they have one major drawback: they cannot withstand high temperatures. For use in an oven (>200 °C) they are simply not suitable.

The solution: biobased and oven-proof tableware

UBITE and Rodenburg Biopolymers are therefore joining forces to solve this problem. Rodenburg Biopolymers is developing, in collaboration with partner Wageningen University & Research (WUR), a biobased PLA compound with a unique crystal structure that can withstand extreme temperatures, from freezer to oven. The raw material? Agricultural residual streams. UBITE then processes the compound into reusable, heat-resistant tableware for the catering industry. The result is sustainable tableware that can simply go in the oven, without compromising on functionality.  

This project marks a new step towards sustainable, circular and practically applicable tableware for the catering industry. By replacing fossil materials with materials from renewable residual streams, the CO₂ footprint of tableware is significantly reduced. Within 10 years, the intended reduction is as much as 95% compared to current fossil tableware.

From lab to practice

The project partners have developed and validated prototypes of the renewable tableware at lab scale, receiving positive responses from the aviation and catering markets. In this project, the product and production process are being further developed by scaling up the compounding and injection moulding process to produce pilot batches for end users in the catering sector.

InnoFunding successfully applied for a DEI+ pilot project on behalf of UBITE and Rodenburg Biopolymers in the summer of 2025. This subsidy enables the technology to be validated at pilot scale, the production process to be optimised and the tableware to be tested in real-world environments. The results will form the basis for further scale-up and commercial application.

Would you like more information about this project? Please contact Rodenburg Biopolymers (Rick Hagenaars: rick.hagenaars@rodenburg.com) or UBITE (Thomas Tesink: thomastesink@ubite.com).

Curious about subsidy opportunities for your project?

Would you also like to start a DEI+ pilot project to scale up your innovation? Get in touch via info@innofunding.nl, where our passionate team of engineers and finance professionals is ready to help you.

This project is carried out with financial support from the Dutch Ministry of Climate Policy and Green Growth.