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Centrope_tt voucher: already 30 companies from CENTROPE have received this enterprise allowance amounting to € 5,000
This year, the Czech company Asio will co-operate for the first time with the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences with the aim of jointly improving the development of innovative processes to reduce energy consumption in plant engineering and construction. This cross-border alliance is made possible by the new financing tool centrope-tt voucher. 30 companies from CENTROPE have already received this allowance. Interested parties may apply for the voucher until end of January 2011.
CENTROPE boasts a total of 25 universities and 1,800 research institutions. To tap this enormous potential, the cross-border network centrope_tt developed the centrope_tt voucher as a financing tool to promote cross-border co-operation between business and research.
All small and medium-sized companies interested in international co-operation with research institutions and domiciled in Lower Austria, Burgenland, South Moravia (Czech Republic), the Bratislava Region, Trnava (Slovakia) or West Transdanubia (Hungary) may apply for a centrope_tt voucher, which entails a funding contribution of up to Euro 5,000. The potential co-operation partners of such companies, e.g. universities, private R&D facilities and research centres, too, must be located in this region. “The centrope_tt vouchers are available as a non-repayable allowance, with the planned R&D service to be implemented within a six-month period. Every SME may receive only one voucher”, Lower Austrian Provincial Councillor for Economy Dr. Petra Bohuslav explains.
Strong company interest in co-operation with R&D facilities from CENTROPE
Companies have expressed strong interest in this financing tool. Fully 30 innovative applications, mainly from the field of clean technology, were already approved by an interdisciplinary expert jury. Companies such as the Slovak enterprise MERET, a manufacturer of pressure gauges and thermometers, or the Hungarian IT entrepreneur Balázs Sarkadi-Nagy, who specialises inter alia in planning systems, will improve their portfolios by means of this voucher.
“In our opinion, the centrope_tt voucher is not only interesting for economic reasons but also because we receive professional support from the centrope_tt network in our application and in the search for a suitable research institute as partner. Being a small enterprise, we do not dispose of the time and resources to look for co-operation partners in the CENTROPE Region”, Bernhard Böck, Lower Austrian representative of Greenspirits, an engine retrofitter, says. Böck specialises in the modification of petrol-fuelled vehicles to run on E85 bioethanol and is on the lookout for a development partner able to optimise related control devices. In this way, the company hopes to boost its turnover and thus to make a decisive, long-term contribution to environmentally conscious traffic modes.
Special CENTROPE database helps to find co-operation partners
To facilitate the search for a suitable research institution in the CENTROPE Region, Centrope experts have developed the database centrope_tt map. Via the project website, interested parties find free online access to this R&D database. Over 2,300 R&D institutions (of which 1,800 are based in CENTROPE) are registered here and visualised on an interactive map.
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