Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund Gives €2 Million to New Hydro-Fish Project

On the 13th of May the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD, visited the successful Hydro-fish project which is to receive €2 million in funding under her Department’s Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF).

The Disruptive Technologies New Project

The Hydro-fish project will provide both environmental and economic impact. One of the key concerns in the aquaculture industry is around sustainability as much of it depends on fishmeal and plant ingredients. The Hydro-fish project will use natural resources efficiently by treating fish with enzymes that make higher value feed ingredients. The result will be a fish product supply chain that is more sustainable. This would be a significant gain for the aquaculture industry in Ireland as it develops to balance increasing consumer demand with a need for more sustainable practices.

As with all Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund projects, the Hydro-fish project is co-funded and collaborative. NUI Galway is the lead partner on this innovative project and Prof Mark Johnson is leading the NUIG team. Jason Whooly, CEO of Bio-Marine Ingredients Ireland heads up the BII team, Catherine Stanton, Teagasc Research Officer is the Teagasc lead and Jamie Downes is leading the Marine Institute team. While Teagasc and the Marine Institute are collaborating on this project, as public bodies they will not receive co-funding from the Fund, which is a testament to this consortium’s commitment to developing an innovative and disruptive solution to address short-comings in the aquaculture industry.

Speaking at Bio-Marine Ingredients Ireland today, Minister Heather Humphreys said:

 “The Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund is a key part of both Project Ireland 2040 and the Government’s new Future Jobs Ireland initiative. It is one of the first funds of its kind in the World and it will ensure that Ireland is at the cutting edge in terms of developing new technologies which will change the way we live and work in the future.”

“The Hydro-fish project represents innovation, collaboration and disruption, all the hallmarks of a successful DTIF project. NUI Galway is a collaborative partner in nine of the twenty-seven successful projects which clearly indicates the quality, novelty and industry-relevance of the research conducted at NUIG, the largest and oldest university in the West of Ireland. I wish to congratulate the Hydro-Fish consortium here today on their success under the first ever DTIF Call.

“The Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund has attracted huge interest and is supporting really ground-breaking projects right across the country. I look forward to launching Call 2 of the Fund in the coming weeks and the success stories it will bring”.

Disruptive technology is a technology which has the potential to very significantly alter markets and their functioning and significantly alters the way that businesses operate. While it involves a new product or process, it can also involve the emergence of a new business model. Disruption is not about technology alone but the combination of technology and business model innovation. It is certainly not “Business as Usual”. This Fund is about the deployment and commercialisation of technology to deliver new solutions and to create and safeguard the jobs of the future.

The Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund is a €500 million fund established under Project Ireland 2040 and is run by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation with administrative support from Enterprise Ireland.

• 27 projects are approved for funding with many led by start-ups and SMEs
• The successful projects will receive over €70 million to 2021
• The successful projects represent the health, food, ICT and manufacturing sectors in Ireland

You can read more about the work of the innovation fund here:

https://irishtechnews.ie/disruptive-technologies-innovation-funding-worth-over-e20-million-at-tyndall-national-institute/

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