R&D and innovation
Eight laboratories, customised formulation, academic collaboration and digital-twin process optimisation — the part of BYCHEM customers actually buy.
Formulation is the product.
A BYCHEM grade usually starts as someone else's failed part: a sole that cracks at −20 °C, a jacket that swells in oil, a film that will not seal fast enough on the line. The laboratory works backwards from that failure to a backbone, a hardness and an additive package — then proves it on equipment that behaves like the customer's.
Development runs alongside academic partners and is supported by digital models of the process, so parameters are optimised before material is committed to a full-scale run.
Figure to confirm before launch: the current site states the laboratory area as both 3,300 m² and 3,500 m².
Everything measured on site.
Synthesis, compounding, analysis and application testing sit on the same campus as production — a formulation change is validated in days, not shipping cycles.
Synthesis lab
Polyol and prepolymer synthesis at bench and pilot scale.
Compounding lab
Additive packages, masterbatch and colour trials.
Mechanical testing
Tensile, tear, abrasion, hardness and flex fatigue.
Thermal analysis
DSC, TGA and DMA across the service-temperature window.
Chromatography
GPC and GC for molecular weight and residual monomer control.
Rheology
Melt behaviour and processing-window definition.
Ageing & weathering
Hydrolysis, heat ageing, UV and chemical exposure.
Application lab
Extrusion, injection and film trials on customer-like tooling.
Simulate first, run once.
Process parameters — temperature profile, residence time, stoichiometry — are modelled before the reactor is charged, with AI-supported optimisation narrowing the trial space.
Discuss a development projectProcess simulation
A virtual model of the line predicts how a recipe behaves at scale.
Parameter optimisation
Historical batch data narrows the window before the first physical trial.
Academic collaboration
Joint work with universities on bio-based chemistry and characterisation.
Bio-based development
Renewable feedstock routes for polyols, plasticizers and TPU.