The future of sustainable manufacturing was on display last Friday as 20 startups pitched innovations that expanded the perception of what is possible, with eight winning ideas sharing in €160,000 in cash prizes, at the EIT Manufacturing BoostUp! 2022 Grand Final in Athens.
The 20 finalists were chosen as the most promising and potentially impactful from a field of 50+ applicants, with innovations designed to make manufacturing more competitive, efficient and environmentally sustainable. Driving this kind of innovation in European manufacturing is the goal of the BoostUp! organisers, EIT Manufacturing, a Knowledge and Innovation Community within the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union.
Startups in BoostUp! 2022 offered solutions that fall within one of EIT Manufacturing’s four flagship areas for supporting sustainable, circular, and digital manufacturing solutions:
• Flexible Production Systems for Competitive Manufacturing
• Low Environmental Footprint Systems & Circular Economy for Green Manufacturing
• Digital & Collaborative Solutions for Innovative Manufacturing Ecosystems
• Human-Machine Co-Working for Socially Sustainable Manufacturing
The competitors were all working on pilot or proof-of-concept projects designed to demonstrate the validity of their technology, in cooperation with a large manufacturing corporation. Finalists were chosen based on their solution’s relevance and impact to a manufacturer’s specific use case and challenges, overall uniqueness and competitiveness of the solution, and scalability. Evaluators also considered the team’s expertise and entrepreneurial drive and the general impression of the application.
During today’s Grand Final in Athens, each participant had three minutes to present their project, followed by three minutes of questions from the jury, made up of independent industrial experts and investors.
The event was also an opportunity for the startups and investors to network throughout the day and during the informal evening gathering that followed the awarding of prizes.
“We were really pleased with the exciting and creative ideas presented at this year’s BoostUp! competition. These startups will be at the forefront of delivering real innovation for the European manufacturing ecosystem,” said Klaus Beetz, CEO of EIT Manufacturing.
The winners
The winning startups, each awarded a €20,000 cash prize and Business Creation support services, were:
• PurCity, Denmark
• Ellure, Sweden
• Neurality, Italy
• Invanta, Czech Republic
• QSEE, Israel
• Embedded ocean, Germany
• Stryza, Germany
• YK-Robotics, Italy
An additional prize of €5,000 was given to Ellure for being the top-ranked startup led by a woman and Neurality for being the top-ranked startup from a RIS country.
Hosted by a new CLC, just after InnovEIT
The BoostUp! 2022 Grand Final was the first BoostUp! competition to take place in person in two years, as the last three were online due to the pandemic. The event was held in Athens, as part of three days of events to launch EIT Manufacturing’s new innovation hub in the city, Co-Location Center South-East (CLC SE), serving eight countries in South-East Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania and Turkey. Like other CLCs in the EIT Manufacturing network, the Athens hub will aim at accelerating cross-national synergies among the different players of the regional manufacturing ecosystems, including start-ups, scale-ups, manufacturing companies, solution providers, small and mid-sized companies (SMEs), universities, and research institutes.
The day before the BoostUp! Grand Final, the new CLC hosted the manufacturing event of the InnovEIT series. Starting 15 September, InnovEIT has toured Europe with nine events looking at innovation and policy from a range of perspectives – sustainable production, health care, education and regional growth, to name a few. On 6 October, InnovEIT was in Athens, looking at employing digital production and AI to empower stronger and more sustainable manufacturing in Europe. The meeting brought together top experts and high-level stakeholders from the EC, the Greek Government, EIT and EIT Manufacturing. EIT organised InnovEIT to take advantage of the lessons learned during EIT’s first decade of operation.
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