Corporate clients have started asking what the disposables are made of. Not all of them, and not always seriously — but enough that it comes up in tenders now, and a caterer who can answer it well has an edge over one who shrugs.
What a corn-starch tray is
Moulded fibre from corn starch instead of polypropylene. Ours is 431.8 × 295.2 × 105.4 mm with a transparent snap-on lid, rated to 120°C, and it takes the same 90g heat packs as the plastic tray — two slots underneath, water through a fill hole at the base. Nothing about how you run a service changes.
That last part matters more than the material. A sustainable product that forces you to retrain your staff and rebuy your consumables doesn't get adopted. This one slots into the same workflow.
What biodegradable actually means here
Be careful with the word, because clients increasingly are. Corn-starch mouldings break down under industrial composting conditions. They do not vanish in a landfill, and Singapore incinerates most of its waste anyway — so in practice the environmental case is about what the tray is made from and what making it costs, rather than about what happens to it afterwards.
That's still a real case. It's just a narrower one than the word implies, and overstating it is how you end up in an awkward conversation with a procurement officer who has done their reading.
The heat pack is unchanged either way. It's the same quicklime pouch in both trays, so switching the tray doesn't make the whole set compostable, and claiming it does would be wrong.
The practical trade-offs
- Rated to 120°C, which is ample for a self-heating service — but moulded fibre is less forgiving than plastic if it's knocked or over-filled.
- It looks better. That's not a small thing for a client lunch; the fibre finish photographs far better than black PP.
- It costs more. Corn-starch mouldings are dearer to make than polypropylene, and anyone telling you otherwise is absorbing the difference somewhere.
Where ours stands today
Straight answer: we don't hold stock of it. It's pre-order, there's no price on the page, and we're not going to publish one we might not honour once a container is confirmed. Register interest and we'll come back with a date and a figure.
If you need trays for a job next week, buy the polypropylene 4000ml tray — it's in stock, it's $7.90 from 4 pieces, and it does the same work. The corn-starch line is worth waiting for only if the material is the point, which for a sustainability-led tender it genuinely might be.
When not to bother
If nobody's asking, don't pay the premium. Plenty of caterers switch because they feel they ought to, charge the same, and absorb the difference — which helps nobody. The time to move is when a client is asking, when it's in a tender, or when you want it on your own marketing and mean it.