€8.5m R&D Investment for Advanced Manufacturing

Northern Ireland’s science park Catalyst Inc has announced the launch of the North West Centre for Advanced Manufacturing – a collaboration bringing together eight companies and four academic institutions that will be delivering 15 world leading research projects as part of an Advanced Manufacturing Super Cluster, with the potential to generate thousands of high level jobs in Ireland and the eligible regions. Norman Apsley, Chief Executive of lead partner Catalyst Inc, explained that the five year €8.5 million investment, part of the EU’s INTEREG VA programme, will enable industry to collaborate with academia at an earlier stage, while minimising risk, improving competitiveness and bringing potential to create more high value jobs in the Knowledge Economy.

NuPrint Technologies of Derry~Londonderry and the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at University of Glasgow will be working on a leading-edge project focused on Painted Conductive Ink Technology, the printing of electronic circuitry on flexible labels to provide interactive labelling. This will be especially useful in a hospital environment, where patient wrist labels could contain information on medication and individual dosage rates; also within the food sector where sensors could be incorporated into the packaging to ensure the food has been kept at the right temperatures during transportation.

The other companies involved under the four main research themes of Additive Manufacture; Advanced Polymers; Nano Manufacturing and Sustainable Manufacturing include Laser Prototypes Europe Ltd (LPE); Armstrong Medical; Randox; Abbott Ireland and GSK-Steifel.

The Lead Principal Investigator for the project, which includes 4 academic partners - Ulster University, Letterkenny Institute of Technology, University of Glasgow and Sligo IT, is Professor Eileen Harkin-Jones who explained that the 13 PhD students and 13 post-doctoral researchers recruited for the 15 research projects will be working to solve problems that will bring economic benefit to the region.

“The Intellectual Property developed through this research will be available on licence to any company throughout the world but the project industry partners will have the advantage of being given the first opportunity to obtain the licence. This demonstrates the importance of universities and industry working together for a wider economic benefit.”