CAPPA is delighted to announce the centre has received over €300,000 worth of funding for new equipment through the Enterprise Ireland Capital Equipment Fund. The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar announced the 29 successful projects of the Capital Equipment Fund administered by Enterprise Ireland through the Technology Gateway and Technology Centre Programmes. CAPPA will be purchasing two new pieces of equipment with the successful funding. These include a benchtop UV Raman and a benchtop nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer. The purpose of this fund is to increase interaction between the Technology Gateways and Technology Centres with industry in Ireland. This will enable more companies to engage in research and development and enhance the service offering to industry for each of the centres. The 29 successful applicants were selected by a rigorous evaluation process based on the eligibility criteria for the call, which included a strong track record of industry engagement and all applications, were reviewed by a panel that included external independent experts.
NMR offers useful information in the characterisation of materials for a range of sectors including medical device, pharmaceuticals and food and beverage. The versatility of NMR spectroscopy lends itself to a wide range of applications. The NMR will enable CAPPA to provide additional capability in the areas of contaminant analysis, raw material purity and identification of unknown materials. NMR spectroscopy has recently made the successful transition from being large, high-maintenance, specialized research instruments to becoming compact, practical spectrometers. This practical change in the size and cost of NMR spectrometers presents opportunities for novel ways to leverage the detailed analytical information provided by the NMR for solving real world industrial materials problems.
The DUV Raman and fluorescence spectrograph will additionally support strong industrial engagement. Since the advancement of lasers in deep UV is only recent, Raman microscopes had limited available in deep UV and as a result, it is unique in Ireland. The Deep UV system will support SMEs in the bio-pharmaceutical industry to enable cheaper production, faster development, and improved quality of the biologics to gain a competitive edge in a global market. The biopharmaceutical industry currently faces major changes because of increasing competition in the field due to the market entry of biosimilars and increasing costs in research and development (R&D) of new drugs. In addition to supporting the biopharmaceutical industry, the proposed technology will support a wider range of R&D in agriculture, food processing, medical devices, pharmaceutical, medical diagnostics and health care.
These new pieces will extend the existing service\collaboration offering at CAPPA. The new equipment will enable CAPPA to increase its engagement with companies in the pharmaceutical, medical device, photonics, and food and beverage sectors and will provide a modernized offering to their current industry partners with increased sensitivity and flexibility. It will also allow for the development and execution of fundamental research on which future applied and industrially led projects will be built and allow CAPPA the capability to retain current industry partners as well as grow larger projects with these current partners.
You can learn more about the current facilities at CAPPA here and the case studies of the work CAPPA has conducted with industry here.