ICIS Innovation Awards 2024 winners celebrated
London, 11 November 2024 – Linde, BASF and SABIC have won the ICIS Innovation Awards 2024 for their electric cracker furnace, the world’s first to be built at demonstration scale.
Judges from NNFCC, Arkema, CEFIC, Evonik and ICIS looked through more than 60 individual entries for the award categories.
The categories and winners are:
- Best Process Innovation from a large company and overall winner: BASF/SABIC/Linde – World’s first large scale electrically heated steam cracking furnace
- Best Process Innovation from a SME: Plastic Energy – Supporting a plastics circular economy through chemical recycling
- Best Product Innovation: LANXESS – Building up Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) value chains sourced and supplied within Western regions – New Bayoxide® iron oxide battery grades as precursor for cathode active materials
- Best Digital Innovation: Brenntag – CO2Xplorer
ICIS Chemical Business deputy editor Will Beacham, who chairs the judging panel, said: “This year the judges were really impressed by the strides chemical industry innovation is making towards tackling the climate emergency. The new technology offered by the overall winner, for example, could reduce CO2 emissions by at least 95% compared to technologies commonly used today, according to the companies.”
Michael Reitz, technology manager for BASF said: “We are honored to win this award. We are part of a large team from all three companies working together so I’d like to recognize the spirit of cooperation we have within this project.”
Martin Hofstaetter, process engineer for furnace technology at Linde added: “It’s great to get the recognition for this project and also to see how the plant is working after all these years of development.”
A full description of all the winning entries can be found here.
US-headquartered digital transformation group Knowde sponsored the Best Digital Innovation category.
About ICIS
ICIS – Independent Commodity Intelligence Services – helps businesses through seamlessly delivering data and analytics, across the chemical, and energy markets. A trusted source and benchmark for price information and insight across key commodities markets worldwide. Our independent, transparent market intelligence informs thousands of quality decisions every day, taking the pressure out of negotiations and giving customers space for more innovative thinking, through published datasets including price assessments, price forecasts, supply and demand fundamentals and more.
Over 150 years of shaping the world by connecting markets to optimise the world’s valuable resources. With a global team of more than 600 experts, ICIS has employees based in London, New York, Houston, Karlsruhe, Milan, Mumbai, Singapore, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Dubai, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo and Perth.
ICIS is part of RELX, a FTSE15 company with a market cap of $78.2bn and an employee base of over 30,000 experts across 40 countries.
About RELX
RELX is a global provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. The Group serves customers in more than 180 countries and has offices in about 40 countries. It employs approximately 30,000 people of whom almost half are in North America. RELX PLC is a London listed holding company which owns 52.9% of RELX Group. RELX NV is an Amsterdam listed holding company which owns 47.1% of RELX Group. The shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RELX and RENX. Total market capitalisation is approximately £62.4bn | €73bn | $78.2bn.