About us – Smart4Poly GmbH
Our mission: Uncomplicated help in the short term
Plastics are a key material in our modern world. They are essential for the global supply of water, food, active ingredients, and consumer goods, among other things. They ensure quality of life and mobility at affordable prices. Not least, they achieve all this thanks to their raw material basis, their fascinating multifunctionality, and their low specific weight combined with maximum resilience and durability. And they do so in a fascinatingly efficient way from a resource conservation perspective.
However, the strengths of plastics and their low price become problems when they are simply thrown away after use. Or when critical additives are used too liberally in their manufacture. This has led to a drastic deterioration in the image of plastics in recent years, and increasingly higher barriers are now being erected to their use.
Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular often lack the expertise and resources to adapt their plastic products quickly enough to changing legal requirements. For example, switching to plastics made from renewable raw materials, biodegradable plastics, or plastics that are easier to recycle—while maintaining the same performance and still offering acceptable prices. Our mission is to support you in this process in a low-threshold manner — i.e., confidentially, transparently, at acceptable costs, and without excessive bureaucracy. For as long as you need and to the extent that you desire.
Our self-image: helping people help themselves in the medium term
In addition to development tasks that can be accomplished with a few targeted initiatives, there are also long-term projects that require lead time. We are happy to support you in these projects as well within the framework of a development partnership. Experience shows that long-term projects become much more efficient when knowledge grows within your company. That is why we offer further training on your plastics and fields of application. This can range from basic training to in-depth training on all aspects of manufacturing, characterization, packaging, processing, testing, and validation. You determine the scope, depth, and breadth yourself. Simply ask about our training and further education options, which we will be happy to tailor specifically to your company and your questions.
Where we come from – the motivation behind our founding
Smart4Poly GmbH was founded in 2014 by polymer scientist Prof. Dr. Matthias Rehahn. With over 30 years of experience in basic research on functional and bio-based plastics on the one hand, and almost two decades of application-oriented research and development for the entire plastics industry on the other, his aim was to offer small and medium-sized companies in the plastics industry high-quality consulting services that were easy to implement.
The majority of the projects carried out since then have focused on issues relating to increasing the sustainability of existing plastic products and on bio-based and biodegradable plastics. The reliable use of recycled materials for high-quality applications, the replacement of problematic plastics, the development of formulations using only natural additives, and well-founded comparisons of the pros and cons of using bio-based or biodegradable plastics are just a few examples from the range of successful consulting projects.
The founder – Prof. Dr. Matthias Rehahn
Prof. Dr. Matthias Rehahn studied chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. At the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, he developed electrically conductive polymers, while at ETH Zurich, he focused on the surfaces and interfaces of polymer systems. He then established a working group at the Polymer Institute of the University of Karlsruhe (now KIT) dedicated to polyelectrolytes, metal-containing polymers, and understanding their structure-property relationships.
In 1999, Prof. Rehahn accepted a position at the Technical University of Darmstadt (TuDa). There, in addition to the Chair of Macromolecular Chemistry, he also took over the scientific management of the industry-supported German Plastics Institute (DKI). While the chair focused on new materials for optoelectronic components, the DKI concentrated on preliminary research for small and medium-sized companies in the plastics industry. In addition to innovative processes for formulation development, the characterization of polymer-based systems in all phases of their product life cycle became an increasingly important highlight. The data was used for rational material design as well as for aging, damage, and failure analysis – all of which are also of outstanding importance for the circular economy and new raw material bases.
In 2012, Prof. Rehahn integrated the rapidly growing DKI as the “Plastics Division” into the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF). This was followed in 2014 by the founding of Smart4Poly GmbH. The aim was to continue providing low-threshold support to small and medium-sized companies in the plastics industry in an optimal manner. At the same time, he served for several years as Vice President for Knowledge and Technology Transfer at TuDa and as Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Center Hereon.
In view of increasingly urgent global challenges, Prof. Rehahn has set himself the task for the future of making the greatest possible contribution to eliminating the environmentally harmful effects of plastics and making them fit for tackling global challenges – including through data science and artificial intelligence.