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INSTITUTE of Technology Tralee has been awarded €1.26 million in new funding to partner in two new research initiatives.
This brings to over €11m the total value of research grants secured by IT Tralee from competitive national and EU funding bodies in the past 12 months.
IT Tralee will receive €940,000 under the EU Agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI), which is co-funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine and the EU, to lead the Biorefinery Glas project, Ireland’s first small-scale bioeconomy initiative.
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The Biorefinery Glas project aims to address key challenges in Irish agriculture while promoting farmer diversification into Ireland’s exciting and growing bioeconomy.
Within this, IT Tralee will partner with University College Dublin, the Carbery Group, Barryroe Co-Operative and Wageningen University-spinout GRASSA BV on the Biorefinery Glas project, through which farmers will demonstrate new business models, using an automated and low-cost biorefinery model, which integrates well within traditional beef and dairy farming and could be replicated across Ireland, addressing fodder and emissions challenges while adding value to primary production.
The two-year demonstration project will commence in 2019 at IT Tralee.
Additional research funding of €268,000 was awarded to IT Tralee under the EU Interreg Atlantic Area Programme. This initiative will see IT Tralee work with research partners in UK, Spain, Portugal and France to develop joint solutions to shared transnational challenges faced that impede sustainable ‘blue’ growth in the marine and maritime sectors along respective EU Atlantic coastlines.
This collaborative project entitled ‘Funding Atlantic Network for Blue Economy Technology Transfer’ or ‘FANBEST’, aims to improve the technology transfer strategies to SMEs of the blue economy by creating a support network of public and private entities focused on the fund raising that make possible the start and scale-up phase. The ‘blue’ economy represents roughly 5.4 million jobs and generates a gross added value of almost €500 billion a year. The project is set to start in 2019 and will run for 3 years.
