Fraunhofer UMSICHT act­ively shapes the energy revolu­tion and raw mater­i­al turn­around. As a pion­eer for tech­nic­al innov­a­tions in the areas of energy, pro­cesses and products, Fraunhofer UMSICHT pro­motes a sus­tain­able eco­nomy in order to improve the qual­ity of life of people and to advance the innov­at­ive capa­city of the eco­nomy. As one of 72 insti­tutes and inde­pend­ent facil­it­ies of the Fraunhofer-Gesell­schaft, Fraunhofer UMSICHT is glob­ally cross-linked and pro­motes inter­na­tion­al cooper­a­tion. Fraunhofer is the largest organ­iz­a­tion for applied research in Europe.
The depart­ment Biobased Plastics of Fraunhofer UMSICHT deals with the devel­op­ment of bioplastics along the entire pro­cess chain. From poly­mer chem­istry to mater­i­al devel­op­ment, pro­cessing and applic­a­tion to sample pro­duc­tion and mater­i­al test­ing, the department’s employ­ees cov­er the know-how. In the PHAtiC­uS pro­ject, they take charge of the pre­lim­in­ary invest­ig­a­tions in the labor­at­ory area and define, togeth­er with Unaver­a­Chem­Lab, the most suit­able PHA types. They also man­age the tech­nic­al and sci­entif­ic part of the research pro­ject and the dis­sem­in­a­tion of the res­ults. The PHAtiC­uS pro­ject per­forms eco­lo­gic­al assess­ments of products and provides decision sup­port for sus­tain­able product devel­op­ment. Life cycle assess­ments (LCA) are used for this pur­pose. The developed lub­ric­ant for­mu­la­tions and thicken­ers are tested for bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity under aer­obic conditions. 

Fraunhofer UMSICHT Website

For more than 90 years, FUCHS Lub­ric­ants Ger­many GmbH has been devel­op­ing and pro­du­cing high-qual­ity lub­ric­ants and related spe­cial­ties – for almost all fields of applic­a­tion and indus­tries. With 58 com­pan­ies and more than 6,000 employ­ees world­wide, the FUCHS Group is inde­pend­ently the lead­ing sup­pli­er of lub­ric­ants. The product range includes more than 10,000 products and related ser­vices in six core cat­egor­ies: Auto­mot­ive Lub­ric­ants, Indus­tri­al Lub­ric­ants, Greases, Metal­work­ing Lub­ric­ants, Lub­ric­ants for Spe­cial Applic­a­tions, Ser­vices. Among the more than 100,000 cus­tom­ers world­wide are auto­mot­ive sup­pli­ers and OEMs, com­pan­ies in the areas of mech­an­ic­al engin­eer­ing, met­al pro­cessing, min­ing engin­eer­ing, aerospace, energy, con­struc­tion, trans­port­a­tion, agri­cul­ture, forestry, steel and met­al, cement, cast­ing and for­ging, but also food and glass man­u­fac­tur­ers – and many oth­ers. FUCHS was one of the first com­pan­ies to launch bio­de­grad­able lub­ric­ants in the 1970s. Since then, FUCHS is invest­ing in the research and devel­op­ment of such lub­ric­ants. As a res­ult, a num­ber of pro­jects have been suc­cess­fully com­pleted in recent years address­ing new raw mater­i­als based on renew­able resources for use in lub­ric­ants. With­in the PHAt pro­ject, FUCHS Schmi­er­stoffe GmbH takes over the lub­ric­ant for­mu­la­tion and the cor­res­pond­ing applic­a­tion tests.

FUCHS Lubricants Website

Unaver­a­Chem­Lab is a man­u­fac­turer of pro­cessing and research chem­ic­als. The com­pany provides extens­ive exper­i­ence in the pro­duc­tion of organ­ic chem­ic­als, phar­ma­ceut­ic­al agents and their inter­me­di­ates, also on an indus­tri­al scale. There­fore, Unaver­a­Chem­Lab is GMP cer­ti­fied. Cus­tom syn­thes­is as well as the devel­op­ment of new products and the requis­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses are anoth­er import­ant pil­lar of the com­pany. Multi-pur­pose facil­it­ies made of enamel with glass con­struc­tion com­bined with the neces­sary peri­phery are avail­able for ver­sat­ile oper­a­tions. Fur­ther, a well-developed ana­lyt­ic sys­tem for strict qual­ity assur­ance of raw mater­i­als as well as the inter­me­di­ate and fin­ished products is present accord­ing to the require­ments of the strin­gent sys­tem of GMP pro­duc­tion with regard to qual­ity assur­ance and qual­ity con­trol. The com­pany was foun­ded in 1982 by Dr. Hasso v. Zych­l­in­ski in Mit­t­en­wald. Togeth­er with its sis­ter com­pany Aaron Chem­istry GmbH, Unavera appears today as a com­pany group. How­ever, the devel­op­ment of new products in labor­at­ory-scale is loc­ated by Aaron Chem­istry. It is the per­fect com­ple­ment to each oth­er: devel­op­ment on a small scale at Aaron Chem­istry and based on that the scale-up of the syn­thes­is up to indus­tri­al size at Unavera. A world­wide cus­tom­er base is sup­plied. Besides chem­ic­al syn­thes­is, ser­vices such as purification/​refinement or filling of products from extern­al pro­duc­tion into cus­tom­er-spe­cif­ic spe­cial con­tain­ers are also offered. Here, a strict qual­ity con­trol also brings secur­ity to the cus­tom­er. After all, the group acts as a pro­vider of raw mater­i­al of mer­chand­ise due to its good glob­al network.

UnaveraChemLab Website

As a sub­con­tract­or, IBB Net­zwerk GmbH takes care of the dis­sem­in­a­tion of the pro­ject res­ults. This is done through this web­site, social media, news­let­ters and press releases. We also sup­port the pro­ject con­sor­ti­um in organ­iz­ing meetings.

IBB Netzwerk GmbH Website