50 years of Institute Dr. Schrader - always looking to the future
The Institute Dr. Schrader can look back on a long company history. The starting point was on July 3, 1973, when Dr. Karlheinz Schrader began his self-employment in the basement of a rented house in Bevern by founding a research and development laboratory for cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. Initially, the consulting laboratory and Creachem GmbH were established. After only six months, the company moved to Sylbecker Berg, to the site of the former Florida Chemie.
The demand for services in the field of hair and skin physiology detection increased so rapidly in the 1980s that Skin Physiology emerged as an independent institute for routine testing. In order to be able to serve the worldwide customers with court-approved expertises, further expansion was necessary and so the institutes Dr. Schrader moved to the Bülte (former Autosalon Lehmann) in the middle of the 80s. After the reconstruction, the first climate test rooms for scientific studies could be introduced.
Within the family, the training of Dr. Andreas Schrader as a state-certified food chemist already set the course for the second generation. In 2001, his father handed over the company. Together with their employees, the Schrader family managed in the following years to lead the institutes to one of the world’s leading testing institutions in the field of cosmetics. To complete the range of services offered by the institutes, an analytical laboratory was founded, Ancopharm (1994), and in 2004 International GmbH was founded to participate in a joint venture in China.
Test methods from Schrader used worldwide
The inventive spirit of the company’s founder has led to test methods that are still used worldwide today, such as the measurement of skin moisture (corneometry) and the determination of sebum content on human skin (sebumetry). In the last decade, further methods were developed, such as the non-contact measurement of the skin surface profile (FOITS) in order to prove the effectiveness of anti-wrinkle creams, or the measurement of the photon number on the human skin (chemiluminescence) in order to detect negative environmental influences on the human skin. From the early 1990s, one focus of scientific work was the testing of sun protection factors of cosmetic products. Currently, the institutes, together with experts around the globe, are setting another milestone in the creation of a new ISO standard for the determination of the sun protection factor. But it is not only in the field of sun protection that the institutes enjoy a high reputation worldwide, but also in other areas of efficacy testing of cosmetics. Thus, in addition to tests in the field of deodorant products, the entire field of application technology testing of hair care products in our in-house test studio also plays an important role. All of these tests have led to decades of improvements in cosmetics thanks to the support of our test persons, who have been tested well over a hundred thousand times. Today, in addition to the global players in the cosmetics industry, the Institute’s clientele also includes international consumer associations.
In order to be able to design research and test conditions particularly close to practice, there are 18 fully air-conditioned test rooms in Holzminden today in which numerous special facilities are accommodated, such as two SPA-POOLs for determining the water resistance of sunscreens or dark laboratories for measuring photon emission on human skin and hair. In Max-Planck- Straße, four expansion stages over more than 30 years have led to a total capacity of approx. 5000 sqm of testing and laboratory space, where 67 people are currently employed.
Already since 2004, a joint venture exists in China for the realization of tests on Asian skin and Asian hair. For this purpose, an institute was established in Beijing in order to be able to carry out studies on test persons in China.
Since 2017, the branch office of the Institute Dr. Schrader with a team of five employees is located in Kassel at Königsplatz. There, too, skin care products are tested under scientific conditions with volunteer study participants.
Always looking to the future
To ensure that the medium-sized company can continue to expand successfully in its unique existing structure, Institutes Dr. Schrader is now launching into the future as Institute Dr. Schrader Creachem GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Normec Group. “At some point, you reach the point where capacities of a small medium-sized company are no longer sufficient and demand exceeds supply. For this reason, the institutes have sought a globally experienced partner for testing, such as Normec, in order to be able to serve additional markets in the future through added synergies,” says Dr. Andreas Schrader, Managing Director of Institut Dr. Schrader Creachem GmbH.
Normec is an independent service company active in North-West Europe, focused on testing, inspection, certification and compliance (TICC) in the food, safety, sustainability and healthcare sectors. Areas of expertise range from water, air and soil quality to fire safety, food safety, medical hygiene for patient safety, GxP training and now cosmetics. Normec’s goal is to grow as a leading TICC company where quality is a top priority across multiple segments.
“Nothing will change for our subjects, who have come to us so reliably for many decades,” explains Dr. Andreas Schrader, “Together with the Normec Group, we will have the opportunity to serve additional markets in the fast-growing global market. We are looking positively and full of excitement into the future and are looking forward to the cooperation as part of the Normec Group!”, he continues.
