At a function  in Dublin last night the  winner of the Intertrade  All-Island Seedcorn Early Stage Category  was announced as Westway Health from Galway.The competition, aimed at companies who have a new equity funding requirement, has an overall cash prize fund of €280,000 with no equity stake  Galway featured tops in both sections of this competition with another Galway  business  ( not in the farming sector) won the overall Startup section - Element Software

Westway Health were established in 2012 to develop and commercialise our innovative, natural antimicrobial LARS – Long Acting Reactive Species- technology, originally developed in the laboratory of Prof. Vincent O’Flaherty in the National University of Ireland, Galway.  The principal focus of Westway Health is the development and sale of  PanaMast™ LC, a revolutionary treatment for mastitis in lactating cows, which is a worldwide issue.  

 

Farm related businesses featured strongly in both the New Start and Early stage categories including Varifed from Ballyclare, Co. Antrim. This company manufactures and installs an "in-Parlour " micro feed system for dispensing key minerals and supplements to diary callte during the milking cycle.  

 Alanya in Cork developes and promotes a health monitoring system for dairy cows which improves the efficiency of farm breeding programmes and reduces health care costs through early illness detection.. 

 UrParts.com from Cork is an online network of buyers and sellers of parts for Agriculture, Construction and commercial vehicles. Urparts created a system wherby seeking to source a part can be submitted on their website and automatically be delivered to relevant suppliers by email  

  

Seedcorn Competition

The IntertradeIreland All-Island Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition is open to all start up and early stage businesses on the Island of Ireland and this years entries showed a heightened level of entrepreneurial activity and a heightened awareness of opportunities for Business Angel and Venture Capital finance with a great breadth of seed finance available across the island.  

If you are a startup business perhaps you should now be thinking about the 2014 competition. More Info here