As part of the EIT’s Crisis Response Initiative, EIT Manufacturing has decided to allocate more than EUR 2.3 million to support eight high potential SMEs, each receiving grants ranging from EUR 200 000 to EUR 400 000 to develop their innovations to boost recovery from the pandemic.
In addition to these eight companies, EIT Manufacturing has also selected an additional, high-potential six companies that will receive business development support over the next three years (2021/2022/2023). This activity directly contributes to the European Union’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the economy, the crisis has also highlighted major opportunities for innovation, such as digitalisation, within Europe’s manufacturing sector.
We received more than 50 applications from 25 countries for the venture instrument. The two main criteria we set up was to select companies that either directly or indirectly tackle the consequences of the Covid-19 crisis, or propose solutions to accelerate digitalisation – as we have seen that companies that have implemented industry 4.0 technology have managed the crisis better.
Klaus BEETZ, CEO EIT Manufacturing.
The selected portfolio of 14 companies, of which 8 will be granted EIT monetary support, allow to address critical manufacturing pain points with expected high societal impact. Those companies bring exceptional values such as high-volume production of critical healthcare supplies, manufacturing flexibility and resilience through automation and collaborative robots, agile ways to customize and design manufacturing products.
Godwill BANCOLE, Business Creation Director.
The selection of the portfolio was done in several stages; first a pre-selection done in June, and taking into account the companies’ activity, the technology they propose as well as short-term and long-term business plans, ending with final selection at the end of July, putting an emphasis on expected societal impact and innovative digital solutions.
The eight selected companies, currently active across 14 countries, are granted support of between EUR 200 000 and EUR 400 000 – read more about the companies and their solutions here:
Venture support instrument – part of EIT Crisis Response Initiative
As part of EIT Crisis Response Initiative, this venture activity directly contributes to the European Union’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The EIT Crisis Response Initiative launched in May 2020 consists of two main tracks of activities to be implemented by the EIT’s eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities across Europe: Venture Support Instrument for start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs impacted by the COVID-19 crisis and another track, aiming identifying and supporting promising Pandemic Response Projects addressing the COVID-19 crisis directly.
EIT Manufacturing received more than 70 high quality proposals from more than twenty countries covering both activities, and was granted EUR 3.3 million in total to allocate, of which EUR 1 million for the Pandemic Response projects and a little more than 2.3 MEUR in Venture support. As a first step in allocating the funding, EIT Manufacturing selected three promising pandemic response projects that directly tackle manufacturing related challenges: developing solutions for safe working conditions & smart medical devices.
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