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Hosted centres in Bernal
Dairy Processing Technology Centre DPTC
The €34m Dairy Processing Technology Centre (Phase 2) was officially launched in October 2021 by An Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue. The re-commitment and investment by the Irish Government and dairy processing industry demonstrates the exceptional value derived from the highly-successful DPTC 1. The ambitious Phase 2 research programme, headed by newly-appointed Centre Director Dr Anne Marie Henihan, will advance the future of sustainable dairy processing to the advantage of our industry and academic partners nationally and globally, whilst contributing heavily to Ireland’s Climate Action Plan.
New to DPTC Phase 2 are the Sustainable Innovation Forum, which aims to identify zero and net zero carbon solutions without impacting on commercial growth, and the Emerging Contaminants Forum, which aims to share knowledge and facilitate aligned responses regarding contaminants to regulatory authorities, customers and auditors. A Memorandum of Understanding, signed in Q3 2021 with SFIfunded research Centre Vistamilk, further shows our partners commitment to sustainable dairy production, and enables both Centres to exploit synergies and establish linkages between milk production and processability.
The PMTC operates a collaborate research model that aims to provide advanced technology solutions to address the needs of the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector.
Research highlights from PMTC in 2021 include the successful translation of research outputs to industry. One such highlight was the translation of a plant cleaning methodology, which delivered significant impact when deployed across some of the world’s largest pharma manufacturing companies. This reduced cleaning changeovers by an estimated 10% per annum and solvent usage by 40%, thus allowing for faster changeover times. In 2021, PMTC competitively won €1.5M in funding. This included three Enterprise Ireland capital equipment grants totalling over €790K (for the procurement of an ATEX-rated clean-in-place rig, a Hybrid Raman analyser and a Fluid Bed system), over €400K in Innovation Partnership programmes and two Career-FIT fellowships totalling €500K.
PMTC’s recent focus on acquiring digitally enabled pharmaceutical equipment and on translating research outputs to industry are prime examples of how the centre aims to provide a risk-free environment for process troubleshooting and improvement, while using its capabilities to advance understanding of how advanced process controls can be applied.
SFI Research Centre for Pharmaceuticals (SSPC)
SSPC has had a vibrant and successful 2021. The centre was awarded Pharma Research Centre of the Year for 2021 by the Pharma Industry Awards, along with Innovation of the Year for our CM-Nano technology. SSPC secured a project with collaboration from five of the world’s leading BioPharma companies – Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Bristol Myers Squibb and MSD – to address global protein A resin shortage.
The centre’s eight-year review also took place, with the international review panel noting SSPC’s ‘pivotal role’ in the academic research engagement that connects to a large number of pharmaceutical companies involved in drug manufacturing in Ireland.
SSPC’s commercial activity has given rise to six licence agreements and one patent awarded. The centre’s industry in-kind contribution has doubled and SSPC supported 22 international projects. SSPC achieved NE:NC (Non-exchequer, non-commercial) funding of €2.5M and secured a prestigious ERC grant. Two new industry members from outside of Ireland joined the centre: Technobis (UK) and the Merck Group (Germany). A total of 241 activities were completed under the Education and Public Engagement umbrella, delivering significant societal impact across Ireland.
