Tecnaro nabs second prize in newly created Innovation Champions Award

With around 500 delegates, the Summit of World Market Leaders is Germany’s largest gathering of both current and emerging world market leaders, commentators and political decision-makers. The event is organized by Wirtschaftswoche magazine.

This year, for the first time, an awards event was part of the programme of the summit. The Innovation Champion Awards were presented during the award ceremony at the Carmen Würth Forum in Künzelsau.

While the first prize went to the Friedhelm Loh Stiftung & Co. KG for its artificial intelligence (AI) edge-cloud computer centre ONCITE, the winner of the second prize was Tecnaro, an Ilsfeld, Germany-based manufacturer of bio-compounds based on renewable raw materials such as lignin, starch, sugar, cellulose, etc.

The award was presented to Jürgen Pfitzer and Helmut Nägele, both CEOs of Tecnaro, in recognition of the company’s innovative biomaterials ARBOFORM, ARBOBLEND and ARBOFILL. These biocompounds represent an important contribution to the transition to more sustainable plastics developed for use in the post-oil era. They meet the requirements in terms of performance and properties for a wide range of applications.

Pfitzer and Nägele were pleased and proud with the honour, calling it an
‘outstanding assessment’ of their efforts of the past 20 years, to develop plant-based and almost CO₂-neutral bioplastic materials of a quality that is equal to petroleum-based plastics. The third prize went to RUD Ketten Rieger & Dietz GmbH u. Co. KG.

The prize was presented by the editor-in-chief Beat Balzli, Varinia Bernau and Kris-tin Rau of the Wirtschaftswoche, and by Dr. Walter Döring, former Minister of Economics of Baden-Württemberg and founder of the academy of world market leaders, which hosted the summit meeting in Schwäbisch Hall for the 10th time.

Among the over 500 participants of the meeting were CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Professor Reinhold Würth and his daughter Bettina Würth, patron Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier, Federal Minister of Research Anja Karliczek, numerous CEOs and numerous world market leader board members.