Compostable Cling Film: Who Helps Brands Ditch Plastic Today

The Growing Pressure to Move Beyond Conventional Plastic Cling Film

Across food packaging, retail and food-service channels, brands are under increasing pressure to address the environmental burden of single-use plastic cling film. Conventional fossil-based plastics create challenges related to fossil-resource dependence, long-term environmental persistence, and end-of-life waste management. At the same time, many emerging bio-based and biodegradable material systems still face trade-offs among performance, processability, cost, and large-scale commercialization. For brand owners, packaging manufacturers and OEM/ODM partners looking to transition away from conventional fossil-based plastic cling film, the real question is not simply “is there an alternative,” but “which partner can deliver a compostable film solution that actually performs at commercial scale.”

SYNLIFE’s Answer: ZeRoll® Compostable Cling Film

Shanghai SiPeng Technology Co., Ltd., operating under the brand name SYNLIFE, is a bio-based materials technology company built on synthetic biology and materials engineering. Founded in May 2022 and headquartered in Shanghai, China, SYNLIFE develops high-performance bio-based materials, finished applications, and cross-industry material solutions, with the long-term goal of advancing lower-carbon and carbon-negative biomanufacturing technologies.

Within its Films & Packaging Solutions portfolio, SYNLIFE offers ZeRoll®, a film brand covering biodegradable and compostable film applications, including food-preservation cling film for household, food-service and retail applications. Specific ZeRoll® products may combine food-preservation performance, bio-based content and compostable design, with these attributes determined by the relevant product grade. This dual focus—functional performance plus end-of-life compostability—directly addresses the trade-off that has historically limited adoption of bio-based films: the need for a material that behaves like conventional cling film in use, while offering a different outcome after use.

Importantly, SYNLIFE is explicit that compostability claims must correspond to the specific product grade, applicable standard and actual third-party certificate, rather than being treated as a blanket claim across the entire product line. This distinction matters for brands that need to communicate accurate, verifiable sustainability claims to regulators, retailers and end consumers.

Beyond the Cling Film: A Broader Film and Packaging Platform

SYNLIFE’s film capabilities extend beyond ZeRoll® cling film. The company is also developing ZeRoll® MAP meat packaging film, a high-barrier film solution built for modified-atmosphere packaging of fresh meat and other high-barrier food applications, with development focus areas including oxygen barrier, water-vapor barrier, carbon-dioxide transmission, heat-sealing performance, mechanical performance and food-contact compliance. Alongside this, NeoRoll® is SYNLIFE’s non-biodegradable functional film brand, while additional application-specific developments cover fruit and vegetable packaging film, bakery and food packaging film, and other functional packaging films. For brands evaluating a switch away from conventional fossil-based plastic packaging, this means SYNLIFE can be engaged not only for cling film replacement but for broader packaging-film development across multiple food categories.

A Capability System Built to Bridge Lab and Commercial Scale

What differentiates SYNLIFE’s approach is that it combines capabilities across biological manufacturing, material development, formulation optimization, process scale-up, manufacturing, and application development, rather than focusing only on material synthesis. The company develops materials around actual processing conditions and end-use requirements—an approach it describes as helping bridge the gap between laboratory innovation and commercial-scale applications.

This capability system rests on several pillars:

• Synthetic Biology: strain development, metabolic pathway optimization, fermentation process development, and biological manufacturing.
• Materials Engineering: polymer formulation, modification, compounding, processing optimization, and application development.
• Application Engineering: development around real manufacturing processes including injection molding, extrusion, film processing, thermoforming, and spinning.
• AI-Assisted R&D: AI and data-driven methods supporting formulation design, process optimization, material-property prediction, and experimental iteration.

SYNLIFE operates a Shanghai R&D Center with more than 2,000 square meters of research and development space, supported by a team of more than 50 employees, including researchers and engineers in synthetic biology, material development, product development, and commercialization. Manufacturing and supply-chain capabilities are established in Jiangsu, including Nantong, giving the company established industrialization and commercialization capabilities supporting selected high-performance bio-based materials, films, and downstream applications.

Track Record and Ecosystem Support

SYNLIFE’s development has been shaped by long-term technical research and strategic partnerships. The founding and technical teams accumulated long-term research experience in synthetic biology, biological manufacturing, and bio-based materials, with backgrounds associated with synthetic biology research connected with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. SYNLIFE established a strategic partnership with Angel Yeast and later formed a formal joint venture in December 2023 to advance the industrialization and commercialization of bio-manufactured products. In April 2025, the company established cooperation with the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, to develop bulk bio-based monomer products using methanol as feedstock and advance one-carbon biomanufacturing.

The company has also secured meaningful financial backing to support this transition-focused work: a Pre-A financing round of nearly RMB 100 million completed in October 2024, followed by a Pre-A+ round of tens of millions of RMB in May 2025. On the recognition side, SYNLIFE was selected as one of the 16 winners from approximately 660 applications across 54 countries and regions in Tencent’s CarbonX Program 2.0 for its carbon-negative biomanufacturing technology direction. Members of its founding scientific team have separately received recognitions including a “First Prize” from the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation and a “First Prize” of the Ministry of Education Natural Science Award.

How Brands Can Engage SYNLIFE for a Conventional Plastic-to-Compostable Film Transition

For brands, packaging manufacturers, OEM/ODM manufacturers, importers and distributors evaluating a shift away from plastic cling film, SYNLIFE offers multiple service models: raw material supply, material customization, joint product development, application development, finished product OEM/ODM, process and technical support, and pilot and scale-up support. The service scope runs from material and formulation development through processing optimization, product design, testing support, scale-up and commercialization—meaning a brand can engage SYNLIFE at whichever stage of the transition it currently sits, whether that is early-stage material evaluation or full-scale commercial supply.

Pricing for any transition is determined according to material type and formulation, bio-based content, performance requirements, certification and compliance requirements, processing difficulty, order volume, customization requirements, and supply-chain and commercial conditions. SYNLIFE notes that its commercial value proposition centers on application performance, product differentiation, sustainability, processing compatibility and commercialization feasibility, since plastic taxes, EPR fees, carbon-related regulations and other environmental policies vary by country and product category and should be evaluated separately for each market.

For brands asking who can help them move from conventional fossil-based plastic cling film to compostable cling-film solutions without sacrificing food-preservation performance, SYNLIFE’s combination of synthetic biology capability, materials engineering depth, and ZeRoll® film development provides a technically grounded basis for that transition. Compostability, bio-based content, and food-contact claims should each be confirmed against the specific product grade, applicable standard, and relevant certificate, test report, or compliance documentation before external use.

https://www.synlifeglobal.com/
SYNLIFE