Lunt, Dr. Jim

With more than four decades of plastics industry experience, Jim Lunt was a founder member in 1997 of the Cargill Dow Polymers joint venture that became Natureworks LLC and helped to pioneer the family of bioplastics based on polylactic acid technology. While with the Minnetonka, Minn.-based NatureWorks (now wholly owned by Cargill Inc.), he served as global director of product and applications development, and as its Hong Kong-based director of new business development.

Prior to that Lunt worked at Nova Chemicals and also helped to develop the Sarlink thermoplastic elastomer business in the United States for Dutch firm DSMNV. But for the past 18-plus years he has specialized in the emerging biodegradable polymers sector. A recipient of the Presidential Green Chemistry Award in 2002, Lunt is listed as an inventor on more than 18 patents and is author of several publications, including “Advances in Biopolymers” published by Momentum Press.

He established his own consulting firm, Wayzata, Minn.-based Jim Lunt & Associates (www.jimluntllc.com) in 2006, and works with brand owners, converters and manufacturers of new and emerging biopolymer materials.

Lunt, a British Canadian who earned his doctorate in the extrusion compounding of reinforced plastics from the University of Liverpool in his native England, since late 2007 also has served as vice president of sales and marketing for Tianan Biologic Material Co. Ltd. Tianan, based in Ningbo, China, has focused its efforts on the family of biopolymers known as polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHAs, and specifically on the most promising type of those materials — a copolymer known as polyhydroxybutyrate valerate, or PHVB.