Tactility Factory Touches Success at £25k awards

NI’s Textile Heritage Combines with Cutting Edge Building Product Design as hottest intellectual property

The Northern Ireland Science Park (NISP) CONNECT’s search for ‘the next big thing’ is concluded – and a team from the University of Ulster last night walked away with a £10,000 cheque as overall winners of the entrepreneurs £25k Award.

Tactility Factory, founded by Ruth Morrow and Trish Belford, edged out nine rival competitors with their patented technology designed to combine textile design with hard building materials such as concrete. The team’s versatile and durable concept could have wide-ranging implications for all types of building construction and received particular credit from the judges for combining Northern Ireland’s longstanding heritage in textiles with cutting-edge building product design.

Trish Belford said: “We are extremely pleased to have been named winner of this year’s £25k Awards. The assessment process has been testing but ultimately extremely rewarding.

“Competing for this award benefitted our business thinking and has given us great insight into the potential of our business on a global scale. This award has greatly boosted our prospects to commercialise our product and go to market. In addition to this, the icing on the cake is receiving a significant financial prize which will provide vital capital at this time enabling us to take advantage of the opportunities that are now presenting themselves.”

The judging panel included Sinclair Stockman, ex-Chief Scientist of BT, and Damien Callaghan of Intel Capital and they were very impressed with the standard of all finalists. In addition, £25k Awards category winners were as follows, each picking up a cheque for £2,500:

· CleanTech (joint winners): TrapCop, allows steam traps to be monitored non-intrusively and reduces maintenance/monitoring and fuel costs

Tactility Factory, designs textiles for integration into concrete

· Digital Media/Software: PiGIS, an online benchmarking tool quantifying pig carcase quality for producers

· BioTech: InvasTech, a cancer examination technique to determine cell invasiveness

· Hi-Tech: SDW, a digital watermarking technique.

The awards, sponsored by Bank of Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland, were presented yesterday (Thursday) evening at a VIP gala ceremony in the newly refurbished Titanic’s Dock & Pump-House at the Northern Ireland Science Park.

Steve Orr, Director of NISP Connect, said that once again the awards have uncovered local talent with innovative ideas and inspiring ambitions.

He added: “The aim of the awards is to discover intellectual property concepts which can offer measureable impact on not only the local but global economy and that is exactly what we have achieved with the winners, Tactility Factory, and all the other finalists.

“The quality of entrants this year was exceptional and in particular the judges were impressed with Tactility Factory’s unique leveraging of one of Northern Ireland’s oldest industrial heritages – textiles – into a whole new and exciting building product arena. It already seems that this idea has great global potential with interest already emerging within the Middle East regarding its potential application in the construction of mosques.

“This is undoubtedly a very exciting time for the company and I would like to congratulate them and all our finalists. It really is a case of ‘watch this space’ with all these finalists and I would wish them every success in the future.”

Michael Kidd Head of Business Banking at Bank of Ireland, main sponsor of the award, said: “I would like to congratulate Tactility Factory on their fantastic achievement for what seems to be a very promising business idea. It’s exciting to see the new businesses being born out of Northern Ireland’s research base and with practical and professional support from NISP CONNECT, INI and Bank of Ireland we have every confidence that those discovered through the £25k Awards could grow to be global leaders in their field.”

Ian Murphy, Managing Director of Clients and Entrepreneurship at Invest Northern Ireland, which also sponsored the event, said: “Northern Ireland has an excellent tradition of entrepreneurship. The high standard of all the category winners in this year’s £25k Awards embodies this and the hard work that has gone into each venture is clear to see.

“My congratulations go in particular to overall winner Tactility Factory for its advanced textile manufacturing technique. The company has developed a product concept with many possible applications in the construction industry and I wish the founders every success as they work towards further development and full commercialisation.”

ENDS

For more information contact Geoff McGimpsey/Kieran Donnelly on 02890 393837.

NOTES TO THE EDITOR

The 10 finalists were drawn from across four separate categories.

HiTECH

· Beatbearing Designs (www.beatbearing.co.uk): an engaging and intuitive musical experience that allows you to create rhythms by arranging ball bearings on a grid.

· D-Stone: designed to prevent damage to harvesting machinery by using millimetre wave radar to detect stones and metal that might otherwise enter the machinery. The technology also has potential military applications in mine sweeping.

· SDW: has developed a patented and award-winning digital watermarking technique to enhance security eg. the team are currently applying their techniques in enhanced biometric secure ID cards.

BioTECH

· AstroDiagnostics: has developed a convenient and sensitive molecular diagnostic test for chicken astrovirus (so helping to prevent what is a major source of financial loss for poultry farmers).

· Invas Tech: developing a standardized, easy to use and relatively inexpensive assay suitable for cancer researchers to determine cell invasiveness and motility.

· FASTREE: has developed a novel air-pruning system that grows specific trees for seed production which in turn produces trees that produce seed earlier, can reduce the cycle time from seed to saleable product from 30 years to six years.

CleanTECH

· TrapCOP: has developed a standalone system that allows steam traps to be monitored non-intrusively while also reducing maintenance/monitoring and fuel costs. This could potentially cut costs in large organisations heating large buildings such as the NHS.

· Tactility Factory: has developed patented technology to design textiles specifically for integration into concrete ie. the textiles remain on the surface and are neither subsumed by the concrete nor able to be peeled away. This overcomes the material’s widely perceived negative acoustic or aesthetical qualities.

Digital Media/Software

· PiGIS™: is an online benchmarking tool that benefits both pig producers and pig abattoirs by quantifying pig carcase quality thus assisting the pig industry to improve quality.

· RediscOvery: is a range of location-based multimedia rich content that will deliver a unique interactive 21^st century visitor experience at cultural heritage sites throughout Ireland. RediscOvery operates on iPhone/iPod Touch devices and utilises existing 3G, mobile, and wireless networks both as a means for distribution and a conduit for information.

Fuller information on shortlisted entries can be found here http://www.nisp.co.uk/uploads/documents/Top%2010%20team%20bios1.pdf

Prize categories & prize fund (further definition will be provided):

· Overall winner: £10,000

· Hitech (hardware and software): £2,500

· Biotech (including life sciences ventures within pharmaceutical and medical devices): £2,000

· Cleantech (companies providing environmentally friendly solutions and alternatives such as renewable energy products or services): £2,000

· Digital Media/Software (companies involved in computer generalisation text, graphics, online tools and animation): £2,000

· Each of the top 10 finalists will receive £500 for participating in the competition

· Total Prize fund: £25,000.

Aim of the £25k Awards

The 25K award competition is a critical part of the process to help improve the deal-flow of indigenous ventures by stimulating new entrepreneurial activity and encouraging the science and technology communities to assess the commercialisation of their leading inventions. The process then addresses the key concerns of the latent entrepreneur and provides access to a network of successful business people to develop the confidence and, potentially, the partnerships to take that initial step into entrepreneurship. Competition judging will favour business plans with the potential to result in new business starts. In 2006, the Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship (NICENT) completed a comprehensive study into the effectiveness of the 25K Award. The review concluded that "the award has made a significant impact, both in terms of personal attitude towards entrepreneurship, the development of entrepreneurship skills and in developing new ideas and technologies from the university base."

For participants, the £25k programme aims to deliver:

· networks of investors and potential partners

· mentoring by successful and seasoned professionals

· education in specific business planning skills as well as general entrepreneurial insight

· team building opportunities to create a winning team of founders

assistance with funding to help start the ventures of winning teams in the competition.

About NISP CONNECT

NISP CONNECT is an independent, non-profit organization fostering entrepreneurship by accelerating the growth of promising technologies and early stage companies. Our core purpose is to connect people, technology and capital to drive innovation in Northern Ireland. We want to help to establish a thriving entrepreneurial eco-system where innovation, vision and talent flourish. A collaboration between Northern Ireland Science Park (NISP), the University of Ulster and Queens University, Belfast, NISP CONNECT acts as an ‘honest, neutral broker’ within the region through provision of direct delivery programmes, mentorship/coaching services, educational seminars and events geared at developing and encouraging entrepreneurial ideas, talent and leadership.