Business News

Ireland’s first innovation centre for marine and energy launches

By Business & Finance
05 October 2015
Val Cummins IMERC
Valerie Cummins, director, IMERC speaking at the launch of The Entrepreneur Ship

Ireland’s newest co-creation space, The Entrepreneur Ship, was officially opened today in Ringaskiddy, Cork.

The new centre seeks to optimise the well-documented opportunities of the blue economy for Ireland, and accelerate job creation in this sector.

Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, said: “The Government has ambitious plans to grow Ireland’s marine economy to maximise the potential of our vast marine resources. Business incubators, accelerators, and co-creation spaces have been proven to support and fast-track start-up companies seeking to exploit emerging market opportunities. The Entrepreneur Ship is the first dedicated marine innovation centre in Ireland providing companies with access to an ecosystem of world class training, talent, research and test bed facilities through the IMERC partners in Cork.”

Val Cummins, director, IMERC, added: “The Entrepreneur Ship is a place of convergence between entrepreneurial talent, and the explosion of new ideas and technologies coming from areas such as robotics, big data, biotechnology, power generation, cyber security, unmanned systems, and power storage as they relate to our ocean and energy systems,” said. “The objective is to grow this enterprise dimension to add to the critical mass of training, research and naval expertise already in the cluster.”

A number of exciting start-ups as well as established international companies are already availing of the facilities and supports at the new maritime innovation centre. These are in addition to the success of the Science Foundation Ireland MaREI Centre in collaborating with 50 industry partners in the research and development space.

Martin Wall, manager, The Entrepreneur Ship, commented: “DARE Technology, an innovative engineering start-up specialising in marine renewable energy, are already located on The Entrepreneur Ship.  Supported by the Local Enterprise Office and designated by Enterprise Ireland as a high potential start-up, DARE are developing a wind turbine for marine vessels that has the potential to remove up to one million tonnes of C02 from the atmosphere each year.”