A couple of US visitors broke away from their guided tour of Belfast’s historic City Hall on Friday night, abandoning talk of the past for a snapshot of the city’s planned future.
As they were shepherded along the marble corridors lined with portraits of former Lord Mayors - well known faces from the North’s rancourous history - they peered into the first floor function room.
There they caught a few minutes of a speech by Belfast's fresh-faced 23 year-old deputy Lord Mayor Guy Spence, describing to a room of leading Irish innovators his city's ambitions to map out a future as a haven for start-ups and tech firms. The story he told was a far cry from the tales tourists normally hear of a city once mired in division.
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City Hall was an appropriate setting for this year's Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation awards, mixing a respect for the rich history of innovation in the city - once internationally respected for its engineering prowess - with a process that aims to recognise the best and brightest new talent in the Irish innovation landscape.
It was perhaps fitting that this year’s overall winner came from the engineering field. PanelDuct, developed by a Co Mayo engineering firm, represents a major advance over traditional ventilation ducting systems.
Overall Innovation of the Year winner: PanelDuct
From the corner shop to the multi-storey offices, the galvanised metal ventilation tubes run through roof cavities like the arteries of most modern constructions. Most of the time they are only visible on the roofs, but they represent significant costs and headaches for construction projects.
The new innovation from PanelDuct is that instead of creating bespoke ducting systems for every build, it has come up with a patented flat-pack ducting system that can be quickly assembled on site and added to as needed. It’s a robust engineering solution that eliminates two of the three stages involved in the installation of traditional systems, dramatically cutting costs both in terms of time, wages and transport.
Engineer Pat Walsh first struck upon the idea several years ago but it was with the arrival of R&D manager Conal O'Neill that the project finally became a commercial reality. The firm has already been involved in build projects with Tesco, the recent refurbishment of Ashford Castle and earlier this month had great success at an international trade show in Germany. "The issue now is managing our growth and meeting demand," says Walsh.
PanelDuct also took the manufacturing category, but there other winners on the night as well.
Creative Industries winner: WholeWorldBand
In what the judges regarded as one of the highest quality categories for some time, WholeWorldBand won the creative industry category, fighting off stiff competition from start-ups Arckit and the Creativity Hub.
WholeWorldBand was conceived by 10CC legend Kevin Godley and backed by former U2 manager Paul McGuinness. It is an innovative new music platform app which has created a global recording studio in the cloud. Fans can collaborate online with their heroes and potentially earn money as a result.
It allows any musician with an internet connection to easily collaborate with others anywhere in the world to make music and videos that can be shared and enjoyed worldwide. Fans can enter a virtual recording studio where they can pick a video and insert themselves, contributing a vocal, instrumental or anything else they feel like adding.
"If a fan records a killer vocal or puts down a really good keyboard part it could end up on a recording that is sold commercially", explains chief executive John Holland. "We have put a lot of work into rights management to ensure that everyone gets their share."
IT & Telecoms winner: Nautilus
Newry based company Nautilus NI Ltd has come up with a novel and low cost solution to the challenge of the increasing vulnerability to counterfeiting of holographic security features. The company’s Tilt2View technology changes colour when the user tilts the product or packaging. Its cost is minimal in comparison to holograms or colour shift inks, it doesn’t require any special device to be decoded, adds no extra raw materials, creates no extra waste and doesn’t affect the recyclability of a packaging or product. It is also completely embedded into the product or packaging making it impossible to be removed.
Energy & the Environment winner: REDT
A revolutionary new electricity storage technology developed by Irish company REDT may offer a solution to the problems associated with intermittent renewable energy sources. The company’s distributed flow battery storage technology offers a highly efficient and scalable solution that stores and releases energy efficiently across a range of applications including conventional distributed generation, renewable energy, and grid support. Like a standard battery it takes excess energy when it is not required and stores it for release when it is.
The solution is based on vanadium redox flow technology. Vanadium is a naturally occurring element widely used in the steel and other industries and it has particular chemical properties which lend it to electrical energy storage applications. The chemistry involved and the construction of the batteries allow for almost unlimited storage capacity as well as very rapid charging and discharging.
"The lead acid battery in a car takes 40 minutes to discharge and six hours to charge up. You need to be able to charge up the battery as quickly as you discharge it and that's what we have achieved with our technology", explains REDT co-founder John Ward.
Bioscience winner: Embo Medical
Embo Medical has created a new medical device which makes embolisation procedures faster and less expensive while also offering more certainty in terms of success. Embolisation is a surgical procedure that permanently shuts down blood flow in blood vessels and is employed to treat a number of diseases such as cancer where it is used to prevent blood from feeding a tumour thereby inducing tumour shrinkage.
The current practice uses a series of small metallic springs or coils which cost several hundred euro each and can break loose causing accidental blockages elsewhere. The Embo Caterpillar device makes the procedure much faster and cheaper and eliminates the risk of coils migration.
The company raised €3 million in first-round funding last August and is aiming for a first human clinical trial as well as US FDA approval for the device later this year. A number of patents have been filed already and there are plans to run a major patient study in 2016.
Agri-food winner: Ocean Harvest
Ocean Harvest has created a range of patented seaweed-based formulas centred on the bioactive ingredients present in different seaweeds. These ingredients allow its feeds to replace many of the synthetic components currently found in many agricultural and aquacultural feed ingredients with significant benefits for the fish and consumers.
Oceanfeed Salmon is a patented feed additive formulated from seaweed which improves the health of farmed salmon, can help repel sea lice and improves taste and texture profile of the fish but more importantly can raise Omega 3 fatty acid levels by up to 30 per cent in the fish. This not only improves the health of the fish but ultimately produces a superior end product with health benefits for the consumer.
"We discovered last year that a novel proprietary blend of micro algae could help speed up the process in the fish's liver which is involved in the production of Omega 3," says Ocean Harvest founder Dr Stefan Kraan. "This is a win win for everyone involved. The consumer benefits through the health giving properties of the fish and the processors and farmers benefit as they can get a better price for the fish."
The award for North/South collaboration went to BFree Foods for its development of a new allergen-free fajita kit, manufactured in conjunction with Evron Foods based in Co Armagh.
During his keynote address, serial entrepreneur Norman Crowley outlined his personal journey from working on the family farm Cork to the sale of one of his tech businesses for €300 million, and the hurdles and pitfalls he encountered along the way. His key message was the need for innovators to persevere, even when things go wrong, and to ignore the naysayers. It was a message that chimed with the endeavours of the 18 innovative firms who made it to the final, and the ambitions of Belfast city as it aims to offer a new positive storyline to future visitors.
