Wexford company Taoglas, which specialises in antennae and RF services, has secured €63o,000 in funding from the European Space Agency. The funding was awarded in relation to commercialising a new product for fixed and mobile applications.

Taoglas’s ZRM project combines the antenna elements, data router and WiFi transceiver into a technology platform to provide an ‘always online’ solution for fixed and mobile applications.

The company was founded in 2004 by Ronan Quinlan and Dermot O’Shea, joint managing directors and majority shareholders. Tony McIntyre is Taoglas’s other shareholder.

Taoglas specialises in IoT antenna technology and is headquartered in Enniscorthy. It also operates subsidiaries in the US, Germany and Taiwan.

According to its most recent account filings, Taoglas Group Holdings Ltd enjoyed a bumper year in 2015, with turnover almost doubling to €27m. The company booked a net profit of €3m, bringing accumulated profits to €7m.

In Association with

Through 2015, the group employed 26 people in Ireland, 65 in Taiwan and 36 in the US. Directors Ronan Quinlan and Dermot O'Shea shared €803,000 in remuneration, up from €584,000 the year before.

The ESA funding enabled Taoglas to employ six high-skilled engineers to develop its new technology platform, which the company says will be a disruptive technology in the IoT marketplace.

Ronan Quinlan (pictured) commented:  “We provide an entire antenna design and supply chain solution for wireless products to reduce our end customer’s product development time and component costs.

“Current solutions for complete connectivity utilise separate routers, antennas and multiple cables. They are complex and costly to install. We identified and addressed a need from our customers for a technology platform that is versatile and scalable, with the back-haul capabilities to provide sufficient bandwidth for mobile applications, such as, rail, buses and marine.”