Polytives honored with 2nd place at the Lothar Späth Award
We take pride in announcing that Polytives GmbH, a company within our DS Group, has secured the 2nd place at the prestigious Lothar Späth Award, accompanied by a prize of 30,000 euros. The award recognizes the collaboration with Prof. Felix H. Schacher from Friedrich Schiller University Jena for the development of groundbreaking polymer additives aimed at energy-optimized plastic processing.
Successful partnership between business and science
The founding trio of Polytives, led by Dipl.-Chem. Oliver Eckardt and Viktoria Rothleitner, closely collaborates with the chair of Prof. Felix H. Schacher. Together, they have identified the potential of a technology born from a research partnership between a local company and the university. The developed polymer additives, particularly the groundbreaking product bFI A 3745, not only enable significant energy savings in plastic processing but also transform previously challenging-to-process recycled materials into easily manageable substances.
About Polytives
Since 2020, Polytives GmbH from Jena has been developing and manufacturing polymeric additives for the plastics industry with the aim of making plastics smarter and more sustainable, further positioning them as the material of the future. This award-winning startup brings research-derived products to market readiness and industrial scaling.
The submitted innovations are impressive and testify to highly fruitful partnerships between business, science, and research.
Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow on the award winners.
Honouring outstanding innovation partnerships
The Lothar Späth Award honours cooperative innovation partnerships between science and industry that have produced particularly ground-breaking product, process and service innovations. The prize is endowed with a total of 140,000 euros and is also explicitly aimed at start-up companies. Due to his multi-faceted personality, Lothar Späth, who was Minister President of Baden-Württemberg for many years, is still regarded as a shining example of cross-border action in politics, society, science and business. The award ceremony took place on 16 November 2023 at the Zeiss Planetarium in Jena.
Photo: (from left to right) Hauke Lackmann and Julian Glatzel from Diersch & Schröder GmbH & Co. KG with Prof Felix Schacher and the management of Polytives, Viktoria Rothleitner and Oliver Eckardt at the award ceremony in Jena.
Strengthened partnership between DS and Polytives
The Diersch & Schröder Group has expanded its partnership with Polytives 2023 and acquired the shares of Beteiligungsmanagement Thüringen GmbH (bm-t). This underlines our strategic commitment to the development and production of environmentally friendly plastics. We are delighted that Polytives' efforts have been recognised in this way and would like to congratulate all the winners on this award.