Economic Assessment of Tamarind Kernel Powder Edible Film Production

Petroleum-based plastic is a critical issue for the global environment, especially packaging, due to high demand and short-term usage duration. Replacing petroleum-based packaging with bio-based packaging has been extensively severe, resulting in many research articles about biopolymer film preparation and characterization. One of the main bottlenecks of scaling up biopolymer film production from lab to industrial scale is needing more techno-economic analysis. In this work, tamarind seed, a main waste from the tamarind pulp processing industry, was selected as a raw material to produce tamarind kernel powder (TKP) edible film, followed by our previous work. For a project lifetime of 15 years with one metric ton (MT)/year of tamarind seed feed, 244.8 MT TKP film production, making revenues of 6,119 $/year with 2.62 years payback time and 38.12% ROI. Sensitivity analysis was studied in terms of selling price and amount of production. Results revealed that the selling price was more significant than film production. The TKP film production on a large scale is an attractive and profitable project, increasing the possibility of petroleum-based food packaging.