"The thematic breadth of the winners reflects the variety of solutions the process industry has to offer for a wide range of issues," said Andreas Förster, CEO of DECHEMA, at the awards ceremony in Frankfurt on August 24, 2022. "Start-ups play a very important role in this with their innovative power."
30 international applications
To strengthen this, DECHEMA, High-Tech Gründerfonds and Business Angels FrankfurtRheinMain, with the support of premium partner Clariant, had announced the ACHEMA Start-up Award for the third time. From more than 30 applications, for the first time also from abroad, an expert jury had selected 10 finalists who were able to present themselves at ACHEMA in a separate session and in the Start-up Area.
Dr. Nikolaus Raupp from High Tech Gründerfonds focused in particular on the importance of disruptive innovation by start-ups for a faster transformation to a sustainable circular economy. Companies developing solutions for this were represented among the finalists, as were digitization topics or platforms for new active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Joachim Reinhardt from Business Angels FrankfurtRheinMain highlighted this diversity and the high quality of the finalists overall. He also emphasized the importance of contacts for young companies; ACHEMA offers the finalists an excellent platform for visibility and networking.
The three winners stood out both for innovative ideas that can achieve a wide reach and solve current challenges in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, but also for solid business plans that were put through their paces by the experts during the competition.
These are the winners:
- Lumatix Biotech is working to increase the availability and affordability of antibodies by developing an effective isolation method based on a light-driven affinity matrix. It is designed to replace the traditional enrichment method using protein A chromatography.
- PipePredict provides a predictive maintenance tool to reduce energy and media losses in pipe networks (water, district heating, chemical). For this purpose, existing sensor data is evaluated with a digital twin and machine learning algorithms, thereby preventing pipe bursts.
- Semodia offers software solutions for the modular process industry that transfer the principle of Plug&Play of the printer driver in IT to Plug&Produce medium Module Type Package to the modular process industry.
Organizers of the ACHEMA Start-up Award are DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V., DECHEMA Ausstellungs-GmbH, Business Angels FrankfurtRheinMain and High-Tech Gründerfonds. Clariant is a premium partner of the Start-up Award. The ACHEMA Start-up Award is also supported by the German Chemical Society (GDCh), the Association of German Engineers (VDI), the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI) and the AiF FTK, as well as the Business Angels Network Germany.
