Ulster Carpets has won this year's top prize at the Irish Times-sponsored All-Island Innovation Awards.

The Portadown-based group saw off the challenge from more than 100 entries to this year's competition which was the first time the awards were run on an all-island basis.

The awards, in their sixth year, aim to encourage competitiveness, and maximise research and development investment in technology.

For the first time, firms in Northern Ireland were invited to enter the competition, now known as the All-Island Innovation Awards.

The awards are jointly organised by Forfás's science, technology and innovation (STI) awareness programme in the Republic and by both InterTrade Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland.

Firms can enter with products developed in the past three years, except for the new technology-based business section, where innovation must be within the past year.

Five prizes were awarded with an overall prize of €10,000 and four awards of €5,000 for winners in each section.

These are: small business - open to groups employing fewer than 50 people; medium business - for companies with 50 to 250 staff; large business - employing more than 250 people; and new technology-based businesses.

Ulster Carpets won both the large business category and the overall award.

Mr Philip Irwin, sales and marketing director of Ulster Carpets, said the company was delighted.

"We have identified innovation as the only way in which we are going to prosper so it is great to get this kind of recognition," Mr Irwin said at the awards ceremony in Dublin yesterday.

The company's winning entry was a new form of carpet weaving which allows small quantities of custom-made carpets be designed for use in the home at a tenth of the usual price.

The new method of weaving not only makes custom-made carpets much cheaper, but it also increases the range of colours and designs from which clients can choose.

The judging panel was also impressed with the group's management and marketing processes which have evolved to meet the challenges of tougher conditions in its sector.

In the small-business section, Mayo-based Xonen Technologies emerged victorious.

The company's new QUAD technology allows the manufacture of higher grade CDs and DVDs than those currently on the market.

Xonen founder and chief executive Mr John Quinn said the group intended to more than treble its workforce in the next year from 20 to 70. "In our game it can be a lonely life so it's great to get an award like this," he said.

Connaught Electronics was joint winner, along with Schrader Electronics, of the medium-sized business category.

Schrader won for its development of a new valve which sits inside a tyre and notifies a vehicle's driver if tyre pressure is unbalanced.

The technology will be compulsory on all new cars in the US from next year, representing a major breakthrough for the Antrim firm.

Connaught's winning entry was new microwave sensor technology which eradicates false alarms on car alarms.

Managing director Mr Joe McBreen said Connaught, a Tuam-based firm, has been operating for more than 20 years.

The new technology was devised after its clients said they were no longer happy with traditional anti-intrusion technology in cars, he said.

"One of the big problems with alarms is that you simply get a lot of false alarms. The software in our product stops that."

The new technology award was also shared by two companies: Wilde Technologies and Fusion Antibodies.

Dublin-based Wilde Technologies has produced software that enables software professionals to develop systems that can be much more easily changed by companies to suit their needs.

Fusion Antibodies is a Belfast company which has developed therapeutic antibodies to treat cancer and to characterise human genes.