Senbis
- Founded in: 2017
- Number of employees: 10
- Country: Netherlands
- Website: senbis.com
Which input provides your business model/core technology towards a bio-based economy?
Senbis is a company that offers R&D services to the polymer industry, in which there has been a strong focus on biopolymers in recent years. Additionally, Senbis develops its own sustainable products. These products are either compostable or biodegradable (in soil or water). This year Senbis has launched a compostable PLA yarn as well as a compostable horticulture rope. Currently Senbis is implementing a test-field with soil-degradable grass infill for sports fields. Other developments are among others a marine degradable rope for the fishing industry (fully developed), a marine degradable mussel net (development in progress) and a soil-degradable trimmer line (upscaling tests in progress)
Which market/clients do you address and which short-term/long-term goals do you have?
Senbis serves a large variety of customers and markets. Any customer that is developing polymers or using polymers in their applications is a potential customer for Senbis. Examples are monomer and thermoplastic polymer producers, yarn and filament producers, bottle producers, recyclers, masterbatch producers, 3D printing companies, and many more polymer converters. In the short term we want to launch more of our own developments. Next year we would like to launch the biodegradable trimmer line and artificial grass infill. Currently we are working on building up the brand with the name “Senbis Sustainable Products” under which we want to launch these products. As soon as we have launched more products and upscaled the production the objective is to spin-off the brand as a separate production company so that Senbis Polymer Innovations focus remains Research and Development while the production is handled by a standalone subsidiary.
What makes your approach unique compared to other stakeholders in the field?
We are the only fully private research and development company in this field. This gives us a lot of freedom in our decision making. Of course this also means that a positive business case is the starting point of all our developments, which is often not the case for our competitors who are mainly semi-government research institutes and universities. We are a start-up like company. Senbis was founded at the end of 2017. This makes us very agile in our development approach. However, we have the advantage that we can build upon a very long history. Senbis took over the R&D equipment of the company API, which grew out of the former research and development department of Akzo Nobel. Our senior staff has decades of experience in the field of polymer development. In addition, we have the unique advantage that we are not technology dependent in our developments. Most manufactures develop new products based on the production machinery they already possess, as our industry is very capital intensive. Senbis looks for the best way of meeting market demands for a product and will find the right production capacity afterwards via our very extensive network.
You can meet Senbis at EFIB in Brussels on 30 September – 2 October 2019.