The venture capital arm of German chemicals and high-end plastics producer Evonik (Essen / Germany; www.evonik.com) has bought a stake in chembid, which it says is “a meta-search engine for chemicals, connecting buyers with suppliers”. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

The start-up, Evonik said, also provides a dashboard of market intelligence, such as price trends and demand patterns, by analysing search data with advanced algorithms. Like other meta-search engines, the chembid platform forwards the search query to a large number of domain-specific search engines and returns a unified result. Buyers can find chemical suppliers from all over the world and compare product offers; manufacturers and distributors of chemicals who engage with the platform can increase the visibility of their digital offerings and can generate new customers and increase chemical sales via the platform, the group added.

With the investment, Evonik will discontinue its own “OneTwoChem” platform, merging the knowhow of its digital marketplace into chembid. “Supporting the development of chembid is an intelligent way to develop our e-commerce activities further and reach a broader customer base,” said Henrik Hahn, chief digital officer, Evonik. The platform has 50,000 users per month from more than 150 countries.

In 2018, the German speciality chemicals and plastics producer had launched an online platform for customers, called “C4Connect” (see Plasteurope.com of 19.10.2018).