July 2026
Okeanos · Park Chang-soon, Asia-Pacific Sales Director
Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is one of the most common minerals on Earth, accounting for more than 4% of the planet’s surface and used by humankind for over 5,000 years. Yet this commonplace mineral has emerged as a talking point in the plastics industry. Okeanos, headquartered in Miami, USA, produces compounds that raise calcium carbonate content to as much as 70% through its patented ‘Made From Stone™ (MFS)’ technology, advancing a business model that structurally reduces dependence on conventional petrochemical resins. The name Okeanos derives from the ‘god of the sea’ in Greek mythology. The company explains that it was “born out of the recognition that the whole world is connected as a single ocean—to protect the ocean at the heart of the global ecosystem while supplying the natural raw materials that are needed, and to play a central role in responding to climate change.”
Founded in 2018, Okeanos is still a startup, but it has already built production and supply networks spanning five continents and is rapidly expanding its reach across global markets. In 2022 it drew attention as a finalist for the ‘World Changing Ideas’ program run by the global business magazine Fast Company.
‘Plastic Resin Is a Binder’
At present, the discourse on the green transition in the plastics industry divides broadly into two streams. One is to raise the share of recycled content (PCR); the other is to substitute biodegradable materials. Okeanos’s approach has a somewhat different grain from both: quite literally, it seeks to halve the total volume of plastic itself. In other words, the goal is to cut the use of virgin petroleum-based material in half.
Park Chang-soon, Okeanos’s Asia-Pacific Sales Director, put it this way: “When a bathtub overflows, you don’t keep mopping the water off the floor—you turn off the faucet.” He called this “effectively Okeanos’s slogan,” explaining that the faucet serving as the symbolic image of the UN Global Plastics Treaty is in exactly the same vein. Okeanos regards plastic resin as simply a ‘binder.’ Calcium carbonate is the core, and the business direction is to steadily reduce the proportion of plastic resin and, in time, to replace even that resin with ecofriendly materials such as PCR or PLA.
BC01 and BC03: Calcium Carbonate as a ‘Base Material’
Okeanos holds a diverse product lineup, and among them the two currently being tested most actively in the Korean market are ‘BC01,’ a compound for flexible packaging, and ‘BC03,’ a compound for thermoforming and PP profiles. BC01 is composed of 65% calcium carbonate and 35% HDPE, specialized for the blown-film extrusion process, and can even be extruded entirely on its own. BC03 is based on 70% calcium carbonate and 28% PP, designed to suit porous thermoforming and profile extrusion.
The key differentiator lies not simply in the ‘content level’ of calcium carbonate, but in the ‘engineering method’ used to bond the mineral within the polymer matrix. Both BC01 and BC03 combine high-purity, finely surface-treated calcium carbonate with optimized polymer carriers and processing additives.
While the calcium carbonate content of the BC01/BC03 pellets themselves is fixed at 65% and 70% respectively, in the finished product it is diluted again with ordinary resin depending on the application. For film it is typically adjusted to around 30%, and for injection molding to around 40–60% inorganic content. Both products have earned US FDA food-contact compliance certification, and the particles are processed into ‘microstone’ smaller than 9 μm. Given that a red blood cell is about 10 μm across, this is a remarkably fine particle.
An interesting point is that this level of calcium carbonate content is hard to regard as an ‘additive.’ In the plastics industry it is generally customary to add inorganic fillers at around 5%. Citing a PP nonwoven test case, Park explained, “When we ran our test, 21% inorganic material went in—more than four times the 5% maximum the industry typically tests.” Okeanos’s compounds call for a shift in perception: not ‘calcium carbonate added to plastic,’ but ‘plastic (resin) added as a binder to a calcium-carbonate-based material.’
Putting Machine-Wear Concerns to Rest
The biggest worry the industry has long held about calcium carbonate compounds was ‘wear on screws and dies.’ According to Okeanos’s informational data sheet (IDS), minerals are generally harder than polymers, but calcium carbonate itself is a very soft mineral on the Mohs hardness scale. The real causes of wear, it says, are not calcium carbonate itself but cases where particles are coarse and large, where impurities such as silica are mixed in, or where the surface coating is inadequate.
On this, Park said: “In the past, the very technology to make particles fine and spherical didn’t exist. They were too coarse and uneven in size, which put a lot of strain on the screw, and impurities couldn’t be cleanly removed during refining, which caused yet more problems.” He added, “Because of experiences like that, processors came to hold a negative perception of inorganic materials themselves.” Okeanos solved this by applying spherical particles of 9 μm or less together with surface treatment (stearic-acid coating), drawing on the processing technology of its exclusive supplier, OMYA.
Park stated, “Across every manufacturing stage we comply with the European Union’s Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP, Regulation (EC) No 2023/2006), and even in long-term mass-production data running to thousands of tons from global clients, it has been verified that equipment wear rates show no meaningful difference compared with using ordinary resin alone.” Indeed, it is already running successfully on commercial lines across several continents—garbage bags in the US, thermoformed food containers, and shampoo bottles in Latin America.
Proving the ‘Barrier Effect’ in Film
An intriguing case that demonstrates the dispersibility of calcium carbonate particles is the ‘barrier film.’ A barrier film—which, like a snack bag, must block the penetration of moisture and air—can only be achieved if the particles are evenly dispersed with no fine pores. Park stressed, “The very fact that a barrier film was made with Okeanos material proves how uniform the particle dispersion is,” adding, “Had the particles been unneven, a barrier film could never have come out.”
In fact, in the US market, barrier films in an LDPE double-ply form (BC02) are reportedly being applied to chip bags and the like. Okeanos products carry a certification mark that lets the carbon-reduction rate be checked instantly via QR code, which doubles as a brand marketing tool. Park noted, “Tests are also under way with global brands—a global sports brand ‘N,’ a multinational consumer-goods company ‘U,’ and a medical-device brand ‘J’—but because of NDAs they are hard to name officially.”
The Carbon Footprint of ‘Made From Stone™’
The most powerful figure Okeanos presents is this comparison: “Producing 1 kg of plastic emits about 3 kg of CO2, but processing 1 kg of stone emits only about 45 g (0.045 kg).” According to company data, the figure was derived from IPCC 2013 100a average values, and the Korean office explained that it was “calculated through an ISO 14040/14044-based life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and third-party verified by a globally accredited body.” Per the US headquarters, the firm provides product specific comparative LCA reports using Open LCA software, the Ecoinvent environmental database, and its own ‘Verra methodology.’
That said, in Okeanos’s own comparison table, the production-stage emissions of a ‘51% Stone + Plastic’ compound (at 51% calcium carbonate) are given as about 1.13 kg CO2-eq/kg. That is roughly 44% lower than general plastic (about 2.03 kg); it is worth noting that the headline ‘0.045 kg’ figure is for the pure-stone standalone processing stage. In other words, the real reduction at the finished-product level varies with the blend ratio, and the Korean office says that “when a client adopts the solution, in packaging we can immediately prove a 50%-plus cut in carbon emissions with a test report.”
Recycling, or ‘Return to Source’
For a compound with 50–70% calcium carbonate, questions naturally arise about its compatibility with conventional mechanical recycling. On this, Park said, “Made From Stone™ products are designed to be fed directly into existing PE/PP recycling streams and recycled together.” Headquarters states it is developing a range of end-of-life routes—recyclable, biodegradable, and compostable—and that recycling-grade products are designed to be fully compatible with existing streams.
Okeanos especially emphasizes the ‘return to source’ scenario. The final stage of its manufacturing diagram ends with “products that reach the end of their life return their stone component to nature.” The core logic: when broken down after landfill or incineration, calcium carbonate emits no additional carbon (net-zero) and even helps neutralize acidity in soil. The fullest realization of this logic is the agricultural mulching film ‘AGF001.’
Agricultural Film with ‘Time-Release’ Technology
AGF001 carries out its crop-protection role and then, in the soil, is a mulching film with ‘Time-Release’ technology that slowly releases calcium carbonate into the ground. The special mineral components in the film are designed to react with ultraviolet (UV) light, moisture, and soil microorganisms, decomposing gradually in step with the crop’s growth cycle.
Once the harvest season ends, the film naturally returns to the soil, eliminating waste-film collection costs, while the high-purity calcium carbonate released during decomposition doubles as a calcium supplement that neutralizes the pH of acidified soil. According to company materials, internal research and overseas field trials have confirmed an average improvement in crop yields of 10–15% or more versus before.
At the headquarters level, ‘two-track’ development is under way to gradually convert the resin (binder)
portion of the mulching film to recycled PCR or PLA, and the Korean office is also planning a separate domestic field trial using the roughly 2 tons of agricultural feedstock it holds.
Global Production Bases and Korea Strategy
Okeanos currently operates more than 12 production bases across five continents, with its South American plants especially active. Mid-development nations such as Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia are pursuing plastics management policies at the national level and often sign strategic agreements with Okeanos to promote it as a recommended line of business. UN climate-treaty funding is also acting as a financial incentive for these countries’ shift to eco-friendly production.
In Asia, there are raw-material production bases in Thailand, India, the Philippines, and elsewhere, and in Japan, ‘Okeanos Japan’ was recently established and is running eco-friendly initiatives together with the Japanese government. Korea currently imports its feedstock from the nearest base, in Thailand. Okeanos’s core strategy is to build localized supply chains, strengthen regional partnerships, and support scalable production close to customers’ markets. Korea is seen as a very important market within this broad regional growth strategy.
From Packaging to Flame-Retardant Building Materials
In Korea, Okeanos is advancing its business in packaging. A recently confirmed domestic case is the
apparel packaging of the women’s underwear brand ‘Khuf.’ Park said, “During June a logo will be printed on
packaging made from BC01-based film, with delivery scheduled for July.” He added, “Our original business
model is raw-material (B2B) supply, but in the early stage we have to run finished-product supply and raw material supply in parallel.”
Another field ripe for expansion beyond packaging is building materials, especially decking. Park explained,
“Wood-flour-based WPC has the fundamental limitation of being vulnerable to fire. Stone-powder-based material is not itself flame-retardant, but the proportion of flame retardant needed when adding it drops markedly.” He also forecast that in coastal decking markets, where salt-driven corrosion and erosion are a major issue, stone-powder-based SPC (Stone Plastic Composite) could become an alternative to aluminum decking as ‘the next generation of WPC.’ He is currently preparing a trial application at the end of July through regular meetings with a firm registered with Korea’s Public Procurement Service.
Park said, “Fields like building materials and nonwovens are applications even headquarters hadn’t envisioned.” As noted earlier, the Korean office prototyped a civil engineering nonwoven from BC03 feedstock, achieving 21% inorganic content in a market where 5% is normally the ceiling. “That level hasn’t even been attempted in that industry,” he said, predicting strengths even in the toughest area for food-grade PCR, such as reusable food trays and lunch-box containers.
Standout Price and Supply Stability Amid the Naphtha Crunch
A Realistic Lever for Feedstock and Carbon Cuts
The following is a direct quote from the original article published in Korean here.
