Full Cycle Bioplastics
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Full Cycle Bioplastics was a California biotech startup founded in 2014 that developed a proprietary technology to convert organic waste, such as food scraps and agricultural byproducts, into polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a compostable bioplastic alternative to oil-based plastics. It licensed the technology to implementation partners and ran a demo facility, aiming to scale to a commercial plant in 2024.
02 / Full Cycle Bioplastics FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Full Cycle never reached commercial production because it could not secure the financing to build it. As early as 2021 its Swedish licensee Bioextrax terminated their agreement, judging it unlikely Full Cycle could fund the project through to commercial production. On June 21, 2023 the secured lender sold the companys collateral at public auction: all its copyrights, patents (including US Patents 11,377,672 and 10,465,214), trademarks and the proprietary organic-waste-to-bioplastic technology, with a minimum bid of $100,000.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Asset sale
A secured creditor scheduled a public auction of Full Cycle Bioplastics’ intellectual property for June 2023. The notice establishes the planned asset disposal, not its completion.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Waste-to-PHA compostable bioplastic technology
- 02
Demo facility; commercial plant planned for 2024
- 03
Could not secure financing to commercialize
- 04
Patents and tech auctioned June 21, 2023