Once it’s done, it looks easy. But the journey to where we are now, was a long and bumpy one. We can’t talk about everything of course ;-), but would like to take you on this journey of challenges, creating our revolutionary new non-plastic, PLQ.
First of all, PLQ is more viscous (thicker) than old plastic, which makes it more difficult to get the material down to the tips of the molds, producing the cutlery design (inspired by nature) as it is ment to be. Together with our partner Chemelot (part of DSM), we spend hundreds if not more hours, changing composition and testing until we finally found the perfect ‘blend’.
Talking about blend, water and wheat straw together create a strong smell and we have to cool quick to get the right strength. Needles to say, it has to be odorless and we fixed that as well: No smell.
Then there’s the thing about temperature. PLQ needs to be heated to become liquid, but too high will burn it or impact the quality. Also inside the mold the temperature needs to be just right. By now we’re the masters of heat and have it right to the tenths of a degree.
Color we believe is also important. We wanted to attain a great looking, natural gold/brown color, because our cutlery has to look beautiful as well. But as it’s a natural product that varies from year to year and to harvest time and color can become more grey. Not tasteful, so that’s a challenge. We know our wheat now, and can select the right wheat for cutlery (for other products we we use the other harvests).
Then there’s fiber type, mixing, smooth talking to the wheat and many other factors that had to be sorted out and worked out to create the perfect PLQ3, but we’ll leave those details to you.
Anyway, long story short, getting the perfect product is a lot of testing, trial and error but in the end we have the most plantastiq cutlery in the world.
That makes it all worthwhile, everything to co-create a plastic-free world. Stay tuned
