A bio-plastic manufacturer in Chengdu, Sichuan province, is ready to take advantage of the China-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) free trade agreement and increase its export of bio-resin film.

Ye wenbin, general manager of Sichuan Corn-T Biology Technology Co. Ltd., has come up with a business plan to export PLA film to ASEAN countries, where the film is processed into bags and then exported to Europe.

Under the free trade agreement, which started on Jan. 1, China and the six richest ASEAN members -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand -- eliminated tariffs and barriers to investment on more than 90 percent of the products traded between China and ASEAN, or more than 7,000 products. The zero-tariff status is expected to extend to the four new ASEAN members -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam -- by 2015.

Thanks to the zero-tariff, Ye told the Western China Metropolis Daily, orders from Singapore, Thai and Malaysia are on the rise.

Corn-T makes both PLA resin and film, according to a speech Ye gave last year. The company priced PLA film for 30,000 yuan (US$4,394) per metric ton and claimed annual sales of 6 million yuan (US$878,818).

The China-ASEAN free-trade agreement is the world's third-largest regional agreement in terms of economic value, after only the EU and NAFTA.