Start-up Award Winners take Platform at ACHEMA

Highlights during ACHEMA 22, which took place at the Frankfurt fairgrounds from August 22- 26, included the announcement of the three winners of the ACHEMA Start-up Awards -Semodia, Pipe Predict and Lumatix Biotech – who convinced the panel with their solutions for "Plug and Produce" in modular plants, Predictive Maintenance in pipelines and for the insulation of antibodies. The winners will each receive 10,000 euros.

"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, held on August 24, 2022. "Start-ups play a very important role in this with their innovative power."

Award organisers DECHEMA, High-Tech Gründerfonds and Business Angels Frankfurt RheinMain, with the support of premium partner Clariant, selected the winners from more than 30 applications, including for the first time, those also from abroad. An expert jury then selected 10 finalists for this third Award competition, 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 digitisation topics or platforms for new active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Joachim Reinhardt from Business Angels Frankfurt RheinMain highlighted this diversity and the high quality of the finalists overall. He emphasised the importance of contacts for young companies and noted the opportunity that ACHEMA offered the finalists as a 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.

- 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.

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.

Frankfurt am Main will again be the meeting place for the ACHEMA-Community from 10 - 14 June 2024. We look forward to this next great opportunity for every participant to exchange in person on exciting and demanding topics

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