Innovation Meets Sustainability RAHN Group

INNOVATION MEETS SUSTAINABILITY

Next year, the RAHN Group, an international family business based in Switzerland, will celebrate 80 years of successful development and expansion. With focus on innovations, RAHN combines high-quality products, in-depth expertise and comprehensive services to offer its customers tailor-made integrated solutions. Romana Moares reports.

RAHN Group has come a long way since its beginnings as a oneman business founded by Hans Rahn, trading in chemicals, in 1940. Today, as a technology-oriented company, the Group provides customers in around 50 countries all over the world with natural and synthetic raw materials together with services to be applied in industries including paints and coatings, cosmetics and foodstuffs.

The Group’s operation is underpinned by two business lines - Energy Curing, where RAHN is a worldwide active supplier of additives, oligomers, reactive diluents and photoinitiators; and Cosmetics, built on the combination a modern, high-quality specialities portfolio and customer support for developing successful cosmetic concepts. With four laboratories in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, China and the USA, RAHN can provide local customised solutions and expertise in various application fields.

“RAHN’s philosophy is based on a high level of customer support with cutting edge technical data combined with up-to-date health, safety and regulatory information.

In the product development and product application areas, RAHN supports its clients with more than 35 years of experience in radiation curing,” affirms Roger Küng, Head of Operations EnergyCuring. Technology innovator

Mr. Küng continues; “RAHN is a premier worldwide supplier of additives, oligomers, monomers, photoinitiators and other customised specialty chemicals. Our products are used in ultraviolet, LED and electron beam cure technologies and are essential components of high-performance inks, coatings, adhesives, medical, rapid prototyping and other applications. The range of products are established under the trademarks GENOMER*, GENORAD*, GENOCURE* and GENOPOL* and are widely used industry standards.”

Innovations have always played a prominent role in the company’s development. Today, RAHN brings its global support for UV systems to the rapidly developing 3D printing market. Whatever the client’s needs, RAHN has proven materials, extensive experience and world class technical and regulatory support. “The core focus of RAHN EnergyCuring is on materials for photopolymer systems. The primary 3D printing technologies utilising photo-curing are Vat photopolym-

erization processes including stereolithography (SLA), variations on direct light processing (DLP) and material jetting.”

Mr Küng points out that RAHN has published a Product Flash with an emphasis on Bio-Renewable Contents of specific RAHNProducts. “This document meets an increasing market demand and lists products that are partially based on bio-renewable (i.e. plant or bio-based, ‘green’) raw materials,” he says.

“Our customers create amazing results with our raw materials, for example for digital inkjet printing – no matter whether gloss, matte, or even 3D effects. What’s more, the materials can be used to print on almost anything. Whether paper, glass, wood, plastic or metal - we have the right products to meet all sorts of needs and technical requirements.”

True Partner

Similarly, the Cosmetics division is based on innovative concepts meeting the requirements of sustainability. It was founded in 1965 but the real boost came in 1999 when RAHN launched its own cleverly devised RAHN-Cosmetic Actives for use in a variety of applications, a holistic platform satisfying individual customer requirements. Focus is on harnessing the potential of nature and combining it with modern technology to generate market-orientated, tried and tested active concepts.

The product range is wide and varied - the latest additions include CELLACTIVE® - Carbon Neutral Essential Cell Boost Factor for skin and hair, available since January 2019, paving the way for a new generation of climate-neutral cosmetic active ingredients with excellent transpar¬ency across the whole supply chain, while assumption of social responsibility compensates for any unavoidable emissions.

“As an independent Swiss family-run company, now in the hands of the third generation, RAHN is able to make swift business decisions and entertain long-term commitments,” Mr Küng points out, adding that staying at the research front will continue to be one of the Group’s tasks to sustain and further develop its market position.

“Just at the end of May this year, RAHN China inaugurated its new office and laboratory. With the new laboratory, RAHN considers to further engage with customers and extend on application projects as well as technical support.”

He acknowledges that progress would not be possible without the company’s greatest asset - the people. “The profound sector experience is one of our competitive advantages - our crucial success factors are the specialist skills and expert knowledge of our staff. We have an extremely loyal team of employees, so customers will continue to deal with the people they know as time passes by.”

“RAHN is your partner for Excellence, not just any supplier,” he continues. “We have been researching, producing and supplying customised speciality chemicals for more than thirty years. Over the time, we have nurtured long-standing partnerships with our customers. This kind of collaboration is the only way to finding the optimum answer to the challenges that we have to face.” n