Four Irish SMEs have been awarded substantial research grants under the terms of an EU programme. Three projects involving SMEs from Tralee, Dundalk, Navan and Dublin/Galway will receive between €0.5 and €2.5 million to bring products from pilot-phase to the market.

The EU programme in question is the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument Phase 2, and the inclusion of four Irish firms in the latest allocation brings to 15 the total number of companies to benefit since 2014.

The four companies are Brandon Products of Tralee; G&M Steel Fabricators, Dundalk; Hydro International Ltd, Navan; and NVP Energy Ltd of Galway and Dublin.

Brandon wants to bring to market a marine-based biotech solution to the problem of ‘pod shatter’ in crops producing bio-oil, a project shared with British company SME Glenside with which it will split €900, 470 in funding.

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G&M is developing an automatic scanner for determining lean meat distribution in pig carcasses and will receive almost €1.1m to take the project forward.

Hydro has teamed up with NVP Energy to develop a low temperature anaerobic digester to treat low-strength wastewater. This project will receive will receive EU funding of €1,693,170 and has a third participant, JK Fabrications Ltd, based in Belfast.

Spread across 19 countries, 45 SMEs were selected in the latest round of Horizon 2020 SME Instrument Phase 2. Each project, 30 in total, will receive between €0.5 and €2.5 million (€5 million for health projects) to bring their product from pilot-phase to the market.

This funding allows companies to invest in innovation activities such as demonstration, testing, scaling up and miniaturisation, in addition to developing a mature business plan for their product. The companies also benefit from 12 days of business coaching. Most projects are proposed by a single SME but some companies team up in a project.