Microbeads AS 

Who we are

Microbeads AS is a Norwegian company with a unique technology to manufacture polymer beads with an extremely narrow particle size distribution. With perfectly spherical shape and monosized particle size distribution - the "perfect spheres" have already been used as functional additives in a wide range of industries including Paints & Coatings, Plastics, Cosmetics, Calibration, Ceramics and Adhesives.

Our headquarter and production facilities are located in the Oslo region, Norway. We have a strong customer focus, and our flexible and innovative organization works closely with the customers to optimize and develop products for different applications and we are running large research projects in collaboration with internationally renowned research institutes. The large-scale production of superior quality polymer beads is combined with efficient logistics solutions to ensure fast and safe supply to the end users.
 

Our history

• 1977 The technology to manufacture monosized polymer beads was invented by the late Professor John Ugelstad
• 1980s The global rights to the technology were licenced to the multinational Norwegian company, Dyno Industrier ASA 
• 1980 - 2000 Life science applications were targeted. The life science part of Dyno became Dynal and Invitrogen (a Thermo Fisher Scientific company)
• 1997 - 2002 Industrial applications were developed in parallel by Polymer Systems (a Dyno subsidiary)
• 2002 Microbeads AS was established as an independent company with exclusive rights to the technology for production and use of monosized beads in industrial applications
• 2020 Microbeads was acquired by Lamberti SpA

The Ugelstad invention

Following NASA’s success making spherical polystyrene beads of exactly the same size in the weightless conditions of space, the late professor John Ugelstad and his co-workers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) replicated the achievement here on earth by using their skills in thermodynamics and polymer chemistry. 

“Ugelstad was already an internationally known researcher for his work in polymer chemistry when he first heard about the problem of preparing monodisperse spheres at a conference in the United States. Back in Trondheim he began to romp with the problem and thought it should be possible to make the particles in a regular laboratory. He said that he always thought best at night and one late hour in 1977 an idea occurred to him. When he realized how easy it was to manufacture the tiny particles, he thought others would also discover the method. Therefore, he patented it. The patent application concerned a method for producing polymer particles in a two-stage treatment dissolved in water, where they can absorb more than 1,000 times their own volume of water-soluble organisms.” (Source: Wikipedia)

The researchers in Microbeads are former students of late Professor Ugelstad and his co-workers, and they are proud to continue the journey of exploring the possibilities of this unique technology. The collaboration with the research partner SINTEF, who contributed to the global patent protection of the Ugelstad technology, has continued in several R&D projects, and further strengthened the knowledge base. Our knowledge and experience have enabled us to utilize the Ugelstad technology in industrial scale and we believe there are plenty of new applications and possibilities yet to explore.