SoBiCo GmbH, which was awarded third prize in the same year, is also reporting further developments just a few months after the winning. With their family of copolymers called Plactid®, the German company can give new, desirable properties to the world's most popular bioplastic, polylactic acid (PLA). The possibilities range from significantly improved elongation at break to higher impact strength and a clearer appearance. “The first materials that we developed together with customers are currently in the test phase,” says Managing Director Johannes Fuchs, lifting the curtain of mystery a little. Not without asking for understanding that “we cannot reveal any further information about the products”. Since winning, the award has been “clearly visible to everyone in the meeting room” of the company, which continues to deal “exclusively with biopolymers”, as Fuchs points out.

The greatest possible proximity to customers is also the working principle of Nölle Kunststofftechnik GmbH, even in the development phase of their re+casts®. With the innovation, the familiy company secured second prize in 2019. The splints for immobilizing bone fractures developed with the Fraunhofer IAP in Potsdam and the St. Walburga Hospital in Nölle’s hometown Meschede offered several advantages over common systems: While conventional casts have to be replaced and disposed of when changes occur in the treated limbs (e.g. after swelling has reduced), the re+casts® could be readjusted several times under infrared light. The rails made from the bio-based plastic PLA could also be industrially composted at the end of their useful life. The aim was to avoid a significant proportion of the up to 150 tonnes of cast waste per year in Germany and to make unavoidable waste part of natural cycles again.
“But in September 2023 we discontinued the product line,” says managing director Heike Ohle-Röth soberly. Because as much as managers in the healthcare system like to talk about sustainability, “in the end, with (too) few exceptions, clinic operators and doctors like to stick with what they know.” In other words it means: disposable use. “The clinics usually have fixed disposal routes,” says Heike Ohle-Röth, referring to what is probably the biggest, systemic hurdle: “Composting plastics is not included in this.” Perhaps, the managing director speculates, “we were simple with our product too early.”

Miika Lehtola from the Finnish company ABMcomposite comes to a similar conclusion. The start-up, which was just five years old at the time, won the third prize at the premiere of the BIOPOLYMER Awards for the ArcBioxTM-MFA plastic series, which was reinforced with biodegradable glass fiber (a small sensation!). ArcBioxTM materials are a biodegradable alternative to common mass-produced plastics such as ABS, polystyrene (PS) and polypropylene (PP). But according to Lehtola, they are currently “on hold because we are confident that the time for this will come“. The company from Tampere currently makes money from, among other things, resorbable implants for the medical sector. The biodegradable glass fibers are also used as reinforcement in them.

Home Eos SA from Farciennes, Belgium, had to manage a strategic turnaround since winning the 2022 first prize. The company received the award for its sound and heat insulating foam called stop sound. The material consists of bio-based, biodegradable and non-toxic substances commonly found in food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, but from which no known polymer has yet been made.
“At the time of the award ceremony, we produced three models of noise barriers with the Stop Sound membranes,” says CEO Pierre de Kettenis, looking back: “Stop Wall against airborne noise, Stop Floor against impact noise, Stop Pipe against flow noise. Our main customers were building contractors, carpenters, heating and plumbing companies, drywall builders and floor installers.”
However, the almost complete blockage of the market due to the Corona pandemic forced a complete overhaul of Home Eos' sales and marketing strategy, as de Kettenis reports: “Our core target groups today are OEM companies who want to integrate the stop sound technology into their products in order to improve acoustic parameters and minimize undesirable effects on health and the environment.”
The company, which has six employees, contacted 140 well-known OEMs worldwide. Around 20 companies showed serious interest. “We are currently in product development with around ten of them,” reveals de Kettenis. If necessary, Home Eos can increase the capacity of its own facilities from the current 120,000 square meters of stop sound products per year to up to 300,000 by introducing a multi-shift system. “However, our ultimate goal is to license our technology.”
De Kettenis confirms that the award played an important role in attracting new customers: “The award helped to arouse the interest of OEMs and strengthened their trust in our technology,” says the entrepreneur. Even though the award is “unfortunately not general knowledge across all sectors,” he believes, it will continue to play an important role in the future: “We present it in our lobby and use its logo in all of our printed matter,” says the company founder. “And as soon as we have a new marketable product, we will apply again.”

We also received encouraging feedback from Brazil and Bavaria. The innovations awarded third prizes in 2022 and 2021 are still holding their ground on the market. “Our award-winning short fiber-reinforced PLA is mainly used for 3D applications,” reports a spokeswoman for Earth Renewable Technologies (ERT) in Curitiba, Brazil. “Thanks to the award-winning PLA short fibers in PLA matrix, we can optimize the properties of the 3D printing material without any chemical additives. The resulting products and waste are fully compostable. This is what we mean by a fully functional and highly effective biopolymer.”
The company Genisys from Hahnbach, Bavaria, continues to sell millions of its biodegradable pegs for robotic lawnmower cables, which won the BIOPOLYMER Innovation Award in 2021. “However, the numbers fell by around 20 percent last year,” says company owner Richard Götz. He sees the reason for the decline primarily in the price of the material: “There have even been price reductions for conventional plastic, but the bioplastic we use has become more expensive.”

The very first main prize winner of the BIOPOLYMER Innovation Awards cannot complain about a lack of demand: Biofibre GmbH from Straubing in Bavaria. Their award-winning BPB Eco Spacer®, a 97% bio-based and biodegradable scattering granulate that is used as a buffer for the transport and storage of patio and paving slabs, led to a rethink in the industry. “There are hardly any litter granules made from LDPE or other fossil plastics anymore,” says Biofibre managing director Jörg Dörrstein. A large part of the buffers, which are approximately the size of a grain of rice to a pea, are carelessly swept aside by workers after the panels have been laid. But the leaders in the concrete products industry no longer wanted to accept the use of petroleum as a raw material source for LDPE. The industry was looking for alternatives that Biofibre could offer in 2019. The Bavarians also took the award as a commitment: “We are now at recipe version 21,” reveals Dörrstein. “We use recyclates, especially from compostable packaging waste, as raw materials and sometimes incorporate wood chips from sawmill waste into the Eco Spacers in order to further improve the ecological balance.” The story of innovations is never ending …