BIA Separations wins KAPPA-Health award for being model SME in
EU projects
4 July 2011
Austrian-Slovenian company BIA Separations has received the KAPPA-HEALTH AWARD 2011 for being one
of the most successful research-intensive and high-tech SMEs in the European
Union.
The company is a developer and manufacturer of CIM short monolithic
chromatographic columns optimized for the separation and
purification of large bio-molecules on laboratory and industrial
scale,
It received the award because it demonstrated during its
participation in EU Framework 6 & 7 Projects that it is “a model of the
wide range of successful research-intensive SMEs participating in an
EU co-funded project”.
This award was the result of KAPPA-Health’s 3-year inquiry among
83 healthcare research-intensive SMEs, which participated in 120 FP6
and FP7 projects. The project’s goal was to identify what makes a
biotech SME successful in terms of participation in EU co-funded
research and how this joint research results in successful
commercialization of the products/services.
Commenting on the award’s presentation, BIA Separations
Downstream Processing Manager, Dr Matjaž Peterka, said “Once again,
we have demonstrated that combing our expertise with CIM monolith
technology leads to significant biomedical discoveries which can be
brought quickly and efficiently to the market. The award recognizes
that BIA Separations is on the path to becoming a successful large
enterprise”.
“European Commission DG Research & Innovation has developed many
useful instruments to enable very intensive R&D in SMEs, several
very fruitful for our company. Unfortunately the instruments which
should follow to enable SMEs fast growth to important global players
are still missing or do not work at all, eg the Risk Sharing
Financial Facility loan scheme being developed by EC and European
Investment Bank is just the opposite, it is killing instrument for
the SMEs. Lacking this part of the financial instruments many
excellent R&D project of the SMEs end dead and billions of tax money
are lost forever”, said Dr Aleš Štrancar, CEO of BIA Separations.
Jacques Viseur (Euro Top), Ludovica Serafini (European Commission),
Thierry Laurent (Coris BioConcept), Matjaž Peterka (BIA
Separations), Antje Plaschke-Schlütter (Molecular Machines &
Industries), Maxime Rattier (Genewave).