This Friday the winners of the 2015 Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation wards will be announced at a ceremony in Belfast's City Hall. Recognising some of the hottest new innovations on the island, the awards are the culmination not only of years of hard work by the innovators themselves, but also mark the end of a long judging process.
At last year’s awards event in Dublin, cleantech firm Oxymem picked up the overall prize for its highly innovative water-treatment technology, which brings down the operating costs of wastewater treatment plants by up to 75 per cent as well as offering other advantages, such as a lower overall environmental impact and far easier deployment.
Since then the Athlone-based firm, co-founded in 2013 by Prof Eoin Casey and Dr Eoin Syron as a spin-out from UCD’s school of chemical and bioprocess engineering, has gone on to pick up a host of other international awards.
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The company won the Water Innovation SME Award in Europe, the Overall Excellence in Intellectual Property Award at the Intellectual Property Awards, was named in the Global Top 30 by the Global Cleantech Cluster Association (GCCA) during 2014, while in January it made the finals of the Imagine H20 Water Infrastructure Challenge in San Francisco.
It has also completed a significant funding round, formed partnerships with some of the world’s leading water companies including Suez International and it has begun marketing its technology in China.
According to managing director Wayne Byrne, this year should see significant uplift in demand as a result of these awards and partnerships.
“We are gearing up our production capacity in Athlone to meet what we believe will be a wall of demand which will come through over the next year or so,” he says
It has been a rewarding 12 months for Oxymem since it won.
So, with six category awards and one overall award winner due to be announced this Friday, who are this year’s finalists which are hoping to replicate Oxymem’s success this year?
MANUFACTURING
Amatech
Amatech has achieved a breakthrough in antenna design which significantly improves the sensitivity and power capabilities of contactless payment cards such as Visa Debit.
Andor
The iXon Ultra is the latest highly advanced camera from Belfast-based Andor Technology. The new camera is based on a scientific technology that was pioneered by Andor called electron multiplying charge (EMCCD).
The new camera uses a unique system to outperform other processors and is so sensitive it can follow dynamic processes in living cells with much greater precision. This is critical to the understanding and treatment of many conditions such as cystic fibrosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
Panelduct
Panelduct represents a major advance over traditional ventilation ducting systems. It eliminates two of the three stages involved in traditional and offers further advantages in terms of cost and convenience. The system comprises prefabricated and pre-insulated galvanised steel panels which are clipped together on site to form the ducting systems. This means there is no insulation or weatherproofing work required. It also means that the system comes in flat-pack form, making it much easier and cheaper to transport.
IT AND TELECOMS
Core Systems
Core Systems has developed a secure platform through which offenders in prison can directly and securely access information and services to which they are entitled. Direct2inmate can be operated using an ATM-style kiosk or through tablet devices and has been designed specifically for use within secure environments such as prisons.
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 T2V (Tilt 2View) technology changes colour when the user tilts the product or packaging.
Sedicii
Anyone who has ever forgotten a password for an online transaction or has security concerns when shopping on the internet will welcome Sedicii's new system which means that an individual need only ever have one password for everything, with that password never actually being sent anywhere. This is known as the zero knowledge proof protocol.
ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Ambisense
DCU spin-out company Ambisense has developed a low-cost device which can provide continuous monitoring of landfill gas (LFG) both to assist in the reduction of harmful emissions and to facilitate its use in power generation.
The UK waste-management sector earns about £400 million annually from LFG-fired energy production, but the process of finding the concentrations of gas on the landfill sites requires constant monitoring and is very costly. The Ambisense device reduces this cost dramatically.
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.
Surface Power HONE
Surface Power HONE has developed a daylight thermal energy system (DTES) which converts normal daylight into energy and turns it into free spatial heating, hot water and cooling for business and domestic users at a higher efficiency than other renewable sources.
The system differs from traditional solar panels in that they rely on direct sunlight whereas the DTES uses photons from ordinary daylight regardless of whether the sun is shining.
CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
ArcKit
ArcKit is a freeform architectural model building system comprising 26 component parts which uses no glue and is made from high quality parts. The system allows designers to quickly build accurate robust models with a 100 per cent reusable material, saving money and time.
In layman’s terms it is like a very advanced Lego for adults. Market reception has been very good since the product’s launch in May 2014.
The Creativity Hub
The Extraordinaires Design Studio is a toy which helps to educate children in more than the three Rs by teaching them thinking skills, how to ask the right questions and how to think of new ideas.
It introduces children to the world of invention, design and creative problem-solving. The sandbox style experience encourages children to design wildly imaginative solutions while building empathy with the characters which come with the product.
WholeWorldBand
WholeWorldBand is an app which offers musicians and music fans what can best be described as a multi-track YouTube experience. Conceived by 10 CC legend Kevin Godley and backed by former U2 manager Paul McGuinness, it is an innovative new music platform which has created a global recording studio in the cloud.
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.
BIOSCIENCE
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 company raised €3 million in first-round funding last August and is aiming for a first human clinical trial as well as US Food and Drug Administration approval for the device later this year.
Fusion Antibodies
The pharmaceutical industry has become adept at producing antibody based drugs such as Herceptin, which mimic the human immune system in the treatment of serious diseases such as breast cancer.
The system works at a DNA level to take an antibody and make minute but critical changes, which allow it to continue to act in the way intended but to fool the human immune system into accepting it as part of its own response.
What makes it stand out from other humanisation platforms is its speed, scalability and the fact that Fusion Antibodies is the first company to guarantee the output of the performance of the humanised antibody.
Lloyds Online Doctor
The Lloyds Online Doctor service provides a responsible and affordable alternative for a select number of GP treatment areas, including repeat prescriptions for the contraceptive pill or patch, erectile dysfunction treatment and STI test kits. The service, which now has 30,000 Irish patients, works through what is effectively an online consultation with a doctor.
AGRI-FOOD
BFree Foods
BFree Foods has developed the world's first allergen-free fajita kit, which has seen the company make a significant breakthrough in the UK market. The innovation came about as a result of discussions with the Coeliac Society of Ireland.
The new kit, which provides a meal for a family of six at just 127 calories a serving, was instantly successful with BFree’s existing customers including all the multiples in Ireland as well as Asda in the UK. The major breakthrough came with Tesco UK, however.
Dr Coy's
Dr Coy's Health Foods has developed a chocolate bar that's actually good for you while tasting nice. The bars have lower effects on blood glucose levels, are high in fibre and vitamin E, and are gluten and lactose free.The range is on sale in over 60 strategic high end retail outlets including Applegreen service stations, Avoca, Lloyds Pharmacies and Brown Thomas.
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.
