Major national awards success for two local companies
Athlone companies have taken home two of the five prizes in the prestigious Irish Times Innovation Awards.
The two companies, Mersus Technologies and BiaSol, progressed through thousands of entries, to being shortlisted among 15 companies across five sectors, before emerging as the winners of their respective categories last week.
Mersus Technologies won the New Frontiers category and BiaSol won the Manufacturing and Design category.
Ballykeeran natives and brother and sister duo Niamh and Ruairi Dooley are the brains behind BiaSol, a 2020 start-up focused on repurposing brewers' spent grains, the largest by-product of the brewing industry to produce a range of healthy, sustainable, zero-waste new food products.
The company’s launch product, Super Milled Grains, is a fast and simple way to add a nutritious boost to your favourite meals.
Using a single tablespoon of the grains in everything from soups, sauces and baking, to a bowl of porridge or your morning smoothie provides you with 10% of your recommended daily fibre intake. It also enhances recipes with a wholesome malty and nutty flavour, and rich brown colour.
As well as being high in fibre, the Super Milled Grains are also high in protein and contain prebiotic fibres (which stimulate the growth and/or activity of good bacteria in the large intestine), B vitamins, and healthy minerals; calcium, zinc, and iron.BiaSol also offers a range of wholesale products to the foodservice industry which have a delicious malt and nutty flavour profile.
Mersus Technologies, based at Inish Carraig, Golden Island, Athlone, specialises in improving training effectiveness and efficiency through its Avatar Academy Virtual Learning Experience Platform.
The software digitises industrial processes and assemblies for knowledge transfer, using computer gaming technology. By creating virtual laboratories, the Avatar Academy platform allows people to prepare for jobs in biopharma and medtech industries before actually starting on any live production line.
This novel concept delivers huge savings by reducing the training time for new or existing staff.
The software uses virtual reality media technology to familiarise each user with a particular process, allowing them to practice as much as they like until they are entirely comfortable with the required task.
Clients can access the bespoke training modules from anywhere, and can track statistics while monitoring the individual’s progress.
Mersus’ Avatar Academy is set to bring a new paradigm in training technology as the media combines with its powerful inbuilt data analytics capabilities in transforming training.
It has the potential to bring a myriad of efficiencies to Ireland’s thriving medtech and biopharma sectors and beyond.