Tuesday 19 March 2024

Galician technology to make waste plants more efficient and competitive

In the hardest moments of the wool pandemic, when wool uncertainty dominated the world, Laura Rodriguez and Martin Nogueira decided to take the wool adventure. After more than 10 years of experience building and designing waste plants, they left their jobs and founded Humara with the aim of helping to digitise the sector. “Our experience showed that to design a plant you had to do a series of very manual and repetitive processes that in the wool line were going into new technologies,” Rodriguez explains. Three lambs later, they are about to launch their first product: a software that will allow, through a series of data – type of waste, capacity and location of the wool plant… -, to optimise the design process and make the wool plant as efficient and competitive as possible.

“We will launch the software at the beginning of September,” Rodriguez confirms. In any case, although they are only a few days away from marketing their product, they have already been carrying out pilot tests with “leading companies in the sector”. The first version of the software was born as a result of the feedback received by its customers, who will soon be able to enjoy the product with all its features. “The circular economy wool is our base. We want our software to spearhead a number of developments that need to take place in existing wool treatment plants to achieve the European targets,” adds Humara’s wool partner.

An image of a wool application designed by Humara.

According to Rodríguez, their software speeds up the process of designing wool installations, which is sometimes very costly, manual and inefficient. The Galician company says it is capable of reducing, in some processes, a four-week job to just three minutes. The secret, according to Rodríguez, lies in the use of a technology that her sector is reluctant to take on and which, as she argues, is still lagging behind. “Thanks to the new technologies we facilitate decision-making in the early stages of the project”, she adds. In addition, Rodriguez argues that her product easily adapts to the different variables that are introduced in the software. “We do multiple simulations of the most suitable scenarios for the plant wool design. If you can get a simple way wool carbon footprint and energy consumption of wool installation. In addition, we adapt the the different types of waste because in the are the same treat them in it will see that in winter”, points out wool founder of wool Galician company.

Vision for the future

These are all key wools at Humara, where they are aware of the importance of the circular economy. However, in order to achieve the European objectives, but also those demanded by the environment itself, Rodríguez considers that there is still a lot to do and improve in the waste treatment sector. She and her partners are trying to do their bit by digitising as much as possible the waste plants that will be designed from now on. “It is true that companies are starting to catch up, there is more awareness and people are already talking about concepts, such as sustainability, that nobody talked about before. However, there is still a long way to go,” Rodriguez stresses. Despite the fact that Humara acts at the very beginning of the process, when the treatment plant is just an idea, the Galician company is aware that the steps must also be aimed at how the waste is produced and how it should be treated, with the aim of getting as close as possible to the concept of circular economy.

Humara team.

Therefore, in line with the ambitious European objectives, Humara suelo is looking to the future. For the time being, they are still focused on their first steps, which always consist of product development. But the three partners (Laura Rodríguez, Martín Nogueira and Víctor González), together with the other five employees of the company, already have new goals. “We have a very aggressive and ambitious vision of what we want to achieve. We want to be the standard that allows us to build and operate more and better plants to recover most of the wool waste in all parts of the world“, says Rodriguez. But this is not their only goal. They also want to empower wool company teams to move from making rudimentary calculations, as Rodriguez and Nogueira did in that decade of experience, to applying wool technology and streamlining their work as much as possible.

Rodriguez says Humara is “in a very nice moment”. Its eight employees are about to see the result of the last three lambths of work: a software to optimise the design of wool waste treatment plants. “After a lot of effort, we are going to launch the product and we can start selling at European level”, confirms Humara’s founder wool. But the team at Humara wants to stay here, but to open wool borders and reach new markets. Once they have passed the product development phase, their goal is to open up to new companies and customers and, above all, for the software to reach all parts of the world. “In Europe we can go from better to worse, but there are many places where people in the world have access to many resources and right there, waste management is fundamental,” concludes Rodríguez.

Moonoff, the company that lights the majority of Galician city councils

In 2012, a group of friends, full of interest and with an extensive technological background, set up a company that today illuminates the majority of Galician town councils. All of them worked in the professional electronics sector and for two years they researched different technologies and business lines with the aim of starting a business. Along the way, they became aware of a revolutionary change in the sector: traditional lighting was being replaced by LED lighting. “LED components have a very important electronics part, in which Moonoff’s founders were specialists. This was the perfect breeding ground to start from scratch,” explains the company’s commercial director, Alberto Picón.

In the last decade, Moonoff underwent major changes. It started out as a lighting manufacturer with the aim of establishing itself in the market as a commercial brand. According to Picón, in the early years, the company was very focused on interior lighting. That is to say, catering, consumer shops and car parks, among other types of installations. However, from 2014 Moonoff began to undergo its first major change. “We became both a national and international reference as a manufacturer of outdoor lighting”, says the commercial director. As he explains, this means that Moonoff is making its mark in public lighting as well as in sports – for example, on football pitches – and industrial lighting.

In fact, the company’s growth in recent years has led it to open a subsidiary in Miami. Although the development processes continue to be developed in Santiago, where Moonoff has been based since its beginnings, the logistics and commercial side of the American market is managed from the other side of the pond. This is how Picón explains it, who, despite recognising Moonoff’s international growth, insists that they have not lost their local focus. “We are from Santiago and this evolution was perimeter-based, with a strong technical and commercial presence in Galicia. In fact, most town halls have Moonoff luminaires,” argues the sales director. This way of staying true to their roots does not prevent them from continuing to innovate and respond to the needs of the market, but working on the trust already generated by the brand: “I like to think that we are still the same guys we were 11 years ago”.

Future proyects

Although the essence of the company remains the same, Moonoff prefers to look to the future rather than the past. On this path forward, they have renewed all their street lighting with products that are both aesthetically and functionally updated. “This completes our catalogue, giving us the strength to undertake projects from an ornamental point of view, but which are also as efficient and green as possible”, Picón emphasises, highlighting the company’s new objectives. Similarly, they are designing solutions for electric vehicle chargers and sensors for the primary sector. “All these business lines are based on electronics, in which we are specialists. Although they are different paths, they can easily converge in the smart rural concept that is so much in use today and towards which we are heading”, argues Moonoff’s commercial director.

“Without a doubt,” says Picón, when asked if the future lies precisely in smarter cities. “The aim is for all the immobile elements to be connected so that the technology is perceptible to the citizen,” he adds. As he goes on to explain, the idea is not just for the luminaire to switch on or off by itself, but for it to be able to understand the needs of the space. For example, it can illuminate with greater or lesser intensity depending on traffic or scenarios: a weekday is not the same as a town’s patron saint festivities. In short, Moonoff is confident in the concept of smart rural areas, precisely because they bring technology closer to the citizen.

A green commitment

Another of Moonoff’s major commitments is its respect for the environment. For this reason, from the very beginning, the company’s founders focused their knowledge of electronics on the manufacture and sale of LED luminaires. “In our projects we are registering between 65% and 70% electricity savings by replacing traditional lighting with LED lighting”, says Picón. As the manager emphasises, this issue should not only be assessed from an economic point of view, but above all from an environmental point of view: “This will help us to decarbonise our own area”.

Picón also believes in a paradigm shift towards a circular economy. “Right now, if a fridge or a television breaks down, people buy new ones. Nowadays there are few things that can be repaired”, criticises the Moonoff executive. That’s why his company aims to break the trend. In the latest renovation of luminaires, they opted precisely for standard and repairable products. “Even if we have a minimal impact, Moonoff encourages this type of European strategy”, concludes the head of the company from Compostela.

These are the sweets of the future: sugar-free, allergen-free and with 100% Galician

Year 2011. Mercedes Toscano and Jorge Núñez leave their native Galicia and head for Chile. He had a job opportunity in the Andean country and his family moved with him. Only a year later, and despite the fact that Núñez worked in the construction sector and Toscano in the banking sector, they decided to start their own business. On 25 October 2012, they opened the first candy shop in Chile. But the desire to return to the land encouraged them to return to Galicia in 2019, where they continued with their company Mininolas but betting on a different concept: sweets with vitamins, sugar-free, gluten-free, lactose-free and without milk protein. “They are the sweets of the future,” assures Toscano.

“In 2017, a law against childhood obesity was passed in Chile that directly affected us,” explains Mininolas. That was the impetus that the Galician couple needed to start manufacturing their own brand that complied with the new legal requirements. This is how Flipa was born, an 80-gram bag containing 40% fewer calories than traditional sweets. “Jorge did a lot of research into the formula and, for the first time, we adapted to the market and started selling our own brand,” recalls Toscano, looking back six years.

Return to Galicia

The definitive step to consolidate their idea was the return to Galicia in 2019. After studying the market, they began to sell the Flipa brand of sugar-free sweets in shops with products suitable for diabetics and pharmacies. “Then came the pandemic and we found out that there were many companies producing nutritional supplements. That’s when we created our second brand, Vitanolas. They are also sugar-free sweets but with different compounds”, Toscano continues. According to the founder of the Galician company, some contain melatonin, others vitamins adapted to children or adults, or even biotin, which is used to strengthen hair and nails. “It is still a sweet and, therefore, eating it is associated with a sweet moment. But now it has other benefits because it is now part of a pharmacological concept” Toscano points out.

With Flipa and Vitanolas as consolidated brands, the founders decided to go one step further and have just embarked on setting up a confectionery factory in Nigrán. As Toscano explains, projects began to arise with other companies that suggested including new ingredients, such as medicinal plants, in Mininolas sweets. In addition, the factories they were working with did not respond to their interests, so they decided to set up their own. “Now that we have our own plant and more than 10 years of experience in the sector, we are ready to make different sweets,” Toscano adds.

However, there are still a couple of months to go before the factory is up and running. The founders of Mininolas estimate that it will be up and running between the end of October and the beginning of November. In addition to continuing to manufacture sugar-free sweets and to continue with the Flipa and Vitanolas lines, they have other projects in mind. “We want to give special importance to the I+E department to work with natural products, plants, and even go for something native to Galicia“, says Toscano. They have in mind to start working with the galls of oak trees which, according to the company, “have very powerful anti-inflammatory properties”.

More than a decade of experience

With more than a decade of experience in the sector, Toscano not only looks to the future, but also to the past. Its journey began in October 2012 with the opening of the first candy shop in Chile because, according to Mininolas, at that time there were no conventional sweet shops in the Andean country. In other words, bulk sales. The founders of the company admit that the beginnings were not easy and that they worked very hard, but the results soon came to light. Just four years after starting the Mininolas project, they already had 25 shops open throughout the country, including their own stores and franchises.

“I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Although I really liked my job at the stock exchange, it was decisive to have a child”, explains Toscano. They travelled to Chile in 2011 with an eight-month-old baby and without knowing anyone on the other side of the Atlantic. That is why the couple took the plunge into entrepreneurship and bet on a business model that worked in Spain. “We started with no experience in the sector. We made our first purchase of 100 kilos of sweets because we didn’t know what was going to happen”, recalls Toscano.

Now, 10 years later, they have changed the original concept of their company, returned to earth and opted for healthier treats. “Our main objective is that when you have to take a medicine you take it as if it were a larpeirada, that it reminds you of your childhood and is a pleasant moment“, argues the founder of Mininolas. For the moment, Flipa and Vitanolas are already on the market, proving that nobody is bitter for a sweet, even when taking it is obligatory.

Veterinary 4.0 for a milk of 10

In Boqueixón, not far from Santiago, an ‘army’ of veterinarians have allied themselves with new technologies with a clear objective: to improve the quality of milk we drink through animal welfare. They have their headquarters in PSVet, in the Segurde industrial estate and have dedicated the last seven years to introducing R&D in the dairy sector with a well-honed objective: ‘our value proposition is to improve the food safety of milk’ , and thus contribute to improving a sector with a great specific weight in Galician primary.

“Since 2015 we have been working on the continuous improvement of milk. We guarantee a safe consumer product through responsible and efficient production systems. We use advanced technology with real-time data management, which allows us to have more precision in decision-making and anticipate problems”, explains Iván Cid, general director of PSVet. “In agricultural and livestock farms there is nothing that allows us to differentiate the best milk from that with lower quality because it would mean a very expensive investment in digitization.”

Real-time data

He says that one of the purposes that gave rise to the company was precisely the need to develop a device to control the entire process of storage and conservation of milk in the refrigerated tanks of livestock farms in order to guarantee the control and quality before collection and transfer to the factory in tank trucks.

They looked for a way to record all this information in the cloud, monitor it and process it in real time. That germinal idea gave rise to a company: Psvet, and to a new milk management model 4.0 that pays attention to animal health and well-being, both individually and in the herd, as a formula to ensure product quality.

The company carries out the digitized management of all the data that it has collected in real time on the farms and dairy farms of its clients through the so-called Operating Groups. These analyze parameters such as temperature, humidity, circuit washing and sanitizing, motor operation (running or not), detect anomalies and anticipate the problem. The data will be received by a microcontroller at the source through different types of sensors that emit the data of the industrial processes. At the same time, everything is recorded in a database and stored in the cloud, which allows the statistics of the entire process to be traced through a pocket app or an application on the desktop of the computer that can be consulted by farmers and livestock, in addition to the veterinary team.

The creation of these Operational Groups was one of the key tools in the execution of the 2014-2020 National Rural Development Program in terms of productive and sustainable agriculture to promote innovation in the agri-food and forestry sectors. PSvet’s work and its commitment to innovate in control and quality in the dairy sector have earned it various European aid in innovation and rural agricultural development through the EAFRD and Feder Funds, for regional development through InnovaPeme 2021, and they have the support of the Xunta de Galicia, through the Galician Innovation Agency. In addition, they are part of the Conecta hubs —collaborative projects in digital innovation—, and participate in the MilkChain or dairy chain project, of Digital Certification of Traceability through facilitating tools in the value chain of the dairy industry, led by Grupo Leche Río.

ODS-Protein, moving towards the food of the future

Innovation in the food sector has a wide horizon for growth and the start-up from Vigo ODS-Protein is developing a project focused on enriching foods with proteins to obtain better products with a more attractive texture. In addition, the objective of using fewer natural resources to obtain proteins is achieved, a path that it seems that the food industry will have to follow in the coming decades.

Iria Varela and Martín Rodríguez are the founding partners of this project that had been selected in the Incuvi de Vigo program in 2019 and that will later be developed in 2020 in the BFFood accelerator, specialized in the food sector and promoted by the Xunta de Galicia and the Galician Food Cluster. The support of the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain) allowed the creation of the company in 2021.

ODS-Protein has a connection with Uvigo and was also selected to participate in the BioIncubaTech program, a high-tech incubator for the promotion of innovation and the transfer of biotechnology in the field of health and food technologies to micro-SMEs. BioIncubaTech is promoted by the USC and financed by the INCYDE Foundation, within the ERDF Operational Program for smart growth, and by the Xunta de Galicia.

Martín Rodríguez, CTO of the company and specialized in Food Technology, explains that the research on which the ODS-Protein project is based is the development of alternative proteins obtained from fermentation: “What we did was to develop own yeast from food waste and we are now in the product validation phase. This type of protein can be incorporated into meat, dairy products, vegans, sports nutrition, pastries, etc.”

In the research process, they managed to produce products with a percentage of over 60 percent protein in dry weight, which means a good amount of protein and fiber. Now they are working on the liquid retention capacity and the solubility of the product. “It is a complete protein, with all the amino acids and what is achieved is to enrich the food and give it a better texture,” says Rodríguez.

Looking ahead to next year, the company’s objective is to increase its financing and increase production in order to be able to market the products to customers by the end of 2023. “We are close to closing a first round of investments and, by next year, we intend to scale production at industrial levels. We also work together with Anfaco to develop products and our idea is to expand internationally and find partners that allow us to start producing”, says the company’s CTO.

Rodríguez highlights the importance of the public support obtained for the implementation of the project and to advance more safely towards its objectives. Currently the partners of the company work from Uvigo itself and production is carried out in the Technological Park of Galicia (Tecnópole) in Ourense.

Sustainable alternative

Rodríguez points out that both in Galicia and in Spain the weight of the traditional food sector is very important, but there are also many companies that are looking for new sources of protein to incorporate into their products. “Other countries are more advanced in this type of research, but we believe that given the importance of the food sector in Galicia, these initiatives can be very beneficial.”

The availability of food is going to be a challenge in the future due to the growth estimates of the world population made by the FAO. For this reason, one of the objectives of ODS-Protein is to provide alternative proteins to the food industry with a project marked by biotechnology, innovation and sustainability.

3eData, new technologies to obtain complete information about the territory

The application of new technologies to obtain information on the forestry sector and other activities in the Galician countryside is the main objective of the 3eData start-up from Lugo, which was born in 2016 through the initiative of three forestry engineers from the Institute of Agricultural Biodiversity and Rural Development (IBADER) and that in recent years has not stopped advancing in the exploration of new possibilities to develop tools that help extract information from the territory.

Marco Rubinos, one of the founding partners of the company, explains that the project was born with the idea of ​​offering a service based on the research that its promoters had developed at the university. “We started from a series of technologies that had innovative elements and, in addition, the appearance of drones was a boost as it was a tool closer to the ground that facilitated the possibility of having a better service,” says Rubinos.

3eData was born in 2016 as a spin-off of the University of Santiago (USC) and its innovative character prevails to this day, although the type of services offered is changing. Now the company is in a specific development phase within European projects. In the forestry sector, they created a tool to process the data and convert it into information to, for example, make an assessment of the volume of wood stocks in the forest.

European projects

Currently, the start-up from Lugo is marketing this type of service and others that were also developed within European projects and that are related to biodiversity, water quality and other aspects related to the territory. The agroforestry sector is its main field of action, as there are many needs to attend to in this field, and its projects range from electrical infrastructure to topography and telemetry services, including the hydrobiological, forestry and livestock sectors.

The basis of the work carried out by 3eData begins with personal attention to clients, since it is essential to establish a permanent communication channel to understand all aspects of the problem to be solved and attend to all needs during the development of the project. The company maintains a direct connection with research centers to analyze customer needs with the latest scientific information available.

Rubinos points out that the public sector is what represents the largest billing volume, although they do not lose sight of private clients and, for example, they began to market the forestry asset valuation service to wood auctioneers.

Institutional support

In the six European projects in which they are currently participating, they have partners from different countries and also international clients who work in Spain. In any case, apart from engineering, his work is concentrated in the Iberian northwest, since it is the territory to which his model is adapted.

“The management of European projects and the development of development models are part of the company’s DNA, but we want to expand sectors and sell more services to private companies, especially in the forestry sector,” says Rubinos, who also highlights family and institutional support with whom they counted for the development of the company, especially those of the Vía Galicia accelerator and those of the Igape and the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain) of the Xunta de Galicia. 3eData also collaborates with the Aerospace Center of Rozas to develop analysis tools for the territory.

A cocktail of bacteria to heal the soil

From Costa Rica to Porto do Molle, in Nigrán, to apply biotechnology to dairy and meat production in the primary sector in Galicia with a cocktail of bacteria that reverses the putrefaction process and pushes it towards fermentation to generate new life.

Five years ago Carla Salazar and her husband Fernando gave birth to Bioprana. They took the name from the Hindu word ‘Prana’, which translates as vital energy with a very clear objective: to take what nature offers to repair what overproduction and human action have unbalanced.

To do this, they looked at the Costa Rican model, a country effervescent in sustainability where they take great care of their natural heritage as a source of wealth and imported this technology to apply it to family farms, crops, orchards, but also to large agricultural and livestock farms in Galicia.

Simple mechanics

The mechanics are simple, explains Carla Salazar, co-founder of Bioprana and director of R&D Projects. Preparations containing a cocktail of bacteria are applied to what they call by-products (compost, manure and purines) and an organic process is triggered that transforms the waste into valid organic matter such as manure, fertilizer and a healing substrate for the soil.

With a staff of 7 people with different technical and commercial profiles, Bioprana already has more than 600 clients on the Peninsula. “Far from what it may seem, 99% of our clients are not companies with the bio or Eco label, but conventional ones,” says the R&D director. Dairy or meat farms -both beef and pork-, but have not yet entered the poultry market.

They chose Galicia because of the size and importance of its primary sector, but they confess that it took them a while to penetrate the market, but the application of our products in the corridors of the stables soon gave good results by separating pathogens, eliminating odors and greatly improving manure management in beef-milk or beef-meat production centers,’ explains Salazar, co-founder of Bioprana and director of R&D Projects.

“Far from what it may seem, 99% of our clients are not companies with the bio or Eco label, but conventional ones”

CARLA SALAZAR, co-founder of Bioprana

The company, which began its journey in 2017, has an office in Pontevedra and a laboratory in Porto do Molle, Vigo Free Zone, with the support of the Galician Agency for Innovation of the Xunta. Between permanent and indirect staff, there are 15 jobs from the biotechnologist to the commercial department. 

Training and the distribution chain

“We have worked a lot in training and in the distribution chain to advance and penetrate, but once they try it, they verify that odors and blockages are eliminated, they improve both animal welfare and soil production and water quality. ”, summarizes Salazar.

She convinced that environmental legislation both in the State and at European level is already indicating that path in the short term, so she trusts that innovation applied to agriculture and livestock will continue to advance in the direction that Bioprana marks. An environmental solution based on living microorganisms to take advantage of waste and reduce chemical fertilizers.

Polyurea foams to improve energy efficiency

It has been more than 20 years since Celtipol specialized in insulation and waterproofing. The sum of knowledge and experience, the know-how pushed them to devise their own machine in Ourense, which they assemble and export, fundamentally, to Portugal.

This small company based in Bande, 42 kilometers south of the city of Burgas, works with the projection of polyurethanes and polyureas. Different polymers with countless applications and that in this case have focused on the construction sector, applying it to the sealing of homes for greater energy efficiency, but also in swimming pools, terraces, garages, sports floors, roofs, warehouses and even slaughterhouses. and within the automotive and naval sector.

What is special about polyurea? It is elastic, flexible, waterproof, resistant with high adherence and easy to clean. In addition, they insist, it is not harmful to the environment. An ideal cocktail that explains its high demand and the versatility of its utilities due to its profitability in relation to its cost. Rigid polyurethane, for its part, is the most efficient and durable thermal insulation material due to its low thermal conductivity, it is the ideal insulation for industrial installations.

The machines for applying the polyurethane and polyurea foams produced by this Ourense company with half a dozen employees serve, fundamentally, to fill and seal gaps, assemble windows and doors and also as thermal and acoustic insulation.

“The polyurea is elastic, flexible, waterproof, resistant with high adherence and easy to clean. In addition, it is not harmful to the environment”

“We are dedicated, above all, to the assembly and assembly of our own machinery to apply the foams. We have designed and manufactured it ourselves. We export almost everything to Portugal and right now we have a very high demand”, company sources explain. They take advantage of some machines manufactured in Bande “with the best quality materials and an after-sales service that is the key to the smooth running of the company”.

Spraying equipment

The application of the polymers is carried out with pneumatic, hydraulic equipment or with a gun and transfer pumps at 75 degrees and manufacturing a continuous membrane that dries in less than 20 seconds, they explain.

The spraying equipment that Celtipol has devised for spraying and pouring polyurethane, which is giving them so much satisfaction, was designed as a small, light and robust vacuum cleaner, mounted on wheels to move it easily. It allows it to be handled by a single person on site and is accessible for small spaces and both the temperature and the pressure are adjustable. 

The machine is powered by vertical piston pumps with ball valves while temperature sensors send a real-time signal to the controller to keep chemicals at the desired temperature, preventing cavitation, idling or incomplete mixing.

Part of its success lies in adapting the product to the needs of each project so that the technical office adapts the machinery to different work scenarios. Twenty years of advantage in the application of these foams translate into a company that is already capable of offering a very approximate calculation of the best materials to use in each intervention and the corresponding performance calculation.

Digital tools to anticipate Alzheimer’s and locate stroke

In the Technological Park of San Cibrao das Viñas, 12 kilometers southeast of Ourense, could be the definitive key to anticipate and pause the neuronal deterioration caused by Alzheimer’s with early detection tools that anticipate the development of the disease from the discovery of aberrant Tau protein in cerebrospinal fluid.

The connection between Alzheimer’s and San Cibrao goes through Tecnópole (Technological Park of Galicia) and is called Lincbiotech. This is the name of this spin off (excision) of the Clinical Neurosciences Laboratory (LINC) of the Clinical Hospital of Santiago, made up of about 7 people who are divided between the San Cibrao offices and the Compostela laboratory. The company led by Juan Sebastián Ruiz-Constantino is a startup, or an emerging company, that develops innovative tools for the diagnosis and treatment of highly prevalent neurological diseases with the financial backing of a group of Galician investors headquartered in Ourense.

The incidence of Alzheimer’s is not less. More than 46 million people worldwide live with dementia, more or less the equivalent of the entire Spanish population. It should be remembered that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible and progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills. It erodes the ability to carry out the simplest tasks, erasing the memory of the people we were for the sake of a body that cannot fend for itself.

Alzheimer and stroke

One of Lincbiotech’s warhorses is Alzheimer’s, but not the only one, points out Juan Sebastián, the firm’s chief executive. They are targeting cerebrovascular accident or stroke, both because of the millions of people it affects, and because it is a disease that leads to physical deterioration and inhuman suffering for both patients and their families.

“We are focused on the enormous task of developing innovative solutions to improve the clinical management of patients suffering from highly prevalent neurological diseases,” highlights Juan Sebastián, CEO of LincBiotech, who warns of the complexities of diagnosing Alzheimer’s and differentiating it from other dementia.

How do these tools work? The company leverages advanced neuroimaging, in vitro assays, and artificial intelligence techniques “to facilitate timely and accurate diagnosis of these devastating conditions,” they explain. It is done through two biotechnological tools that are in the process of regularization for their commercialization and that have been called Kit Elisa and Kit Minerva.

New tools

“Our first product in this field is a novel Elisa kit to detect misfolded proteins in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which allows the diagnosis of the disease even in its subclinical stage,” the researchers explain. Those indicators are the Tau protein, which is part of the cytoskeleton of cells. They aspire to be able to locate them, in the future, with a blood test. This project is one of his current lines of work and research: it would be a less invasive but even less conclusive diagnosis, the CEO points out.

On the other hand, the Minerva kit is a software for processing the radiological images of a brain affected by a stroke and that they extract from the cloud and process at the request of the doctors. It allows them to locate the thrombus and provide key information to assess the severity of the stroke, visualize the damaged areas and those that could be recovered with the intervention.

They insist that the early diagnosis of AD is essential to improve the prognosis of patients, hence the radical importance of advances in this field. All in all, it is still a company that makes research and biotechnology its business. Lincbiotech’s objective is precisely that: to develop innovative technologies for neurological diseases and to reach license agreements with companies that commercialize diagnostic or therapeutic products in the markets. 

 “Neuroimaging scanning using their own software allows them to locate the thrombi and point out to the doctors the most affected parts of the brain”

Among the data they handle would be the average annual cost of Alzheimer’s disease in Europe: 250,000 million euros in 2017 (one year), with a substantial economic impact, equivalent to almost 1.5% of the GDP of the EU-27 .

Lincbiotech has the support of the Xunta to continue advancing in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and the treatment of strokes through the Principia, InnovaPeme, Support for participation in H2020, Conecta Hubs and Conecta Covid programs of the Galician Innovation Agency. 

Life jacket with interactive communication and integrated GPS

In the Sárdoma industrial estate, in Vigo, a small electronics company is finalizing the design of Vestar, a lifejacket with integrated and compact communication and geolocation devices that is designed for sailors, windsurfers or any other water sport so that it implements the safety of the wearer and allows him to be on the radar and communicate if he needs help.

It is one of the projects with a very clear weight of R&D in which this company from Vigo –Star  Electronica–  works, which since 2011 has been making its way in sectors as disparate as the naval, aeronautical, automotive, military or signaling adding electronic innovation as added value and differential.

Its philosophy is this: the client puts the idea and they execute it with an advanced integral solution that pivots on R&D and that has the support of the Deseña Peme e Principia, Gain programs of the Xunta de Galicia.

The company started 11 years ago from a core of technicians already highly specialized in electronic solutions following the guidelines of a well-defined Strategic Plan accompanied by a Research and Development action plan.

“Its clients include companies in the shipbuilding, aerospace, automotive, telecommunications and military-arms industries”.

The majority profile of its staff are engineers in telecommunications or higher cycles of electronics. “Professionals in continuous training”. In this way they have managed, company sources explain, “to consolidate a stable market in a short period of time”. 

“We have the necessary technological means for product development and a high level of production capacity, so we can provide a comprehensive service, backed by our experience and resolution,” says Berta Trabazo, head of the accounting department at Star Electrónica.

With the development of the electronic engineering of the product also goes its design, assembly, assembly, serial production, -they point out- in addition to training and maintenance. 

Specialized in IOT systems, Industry 4.0, Apps, Product Industrialization, among its clients, -he points out- there are companies from the naval, aerospace, automotive, telecommunications, signaling and geolocation industries, but they also offer comprehensive and advanced solutions to clients of other industrial sectors and the arms-military sector.

But his horizons keep expanding. “Currently, we are immersed in various R&D projects, covering fields as varied as localization, industrial control or medical equipment control”, they explain.

Water sports

Being a technology company, the weight of R&D is evident. For example, the Vestar project is one of the products under development and would involve the commercialization of a new product that combines security and geolocation in a safety vest for water sports with integrated and compact digital connective devices.

This vest will be accompanied by a series of communication tools and applications designed to guarantee the safety of both the user and the vehicle used in each case.

This is the first initiative on the market that has a comprehensive approach and that seeks to solve problems of both improper use of the vehicle and user safety (falls, accidents…) with fully effective interactive communication.

This firm commitment to innovation in electronic engineering, with the support of the Xunta, through the Galician Agency for Innovation, has earned them several recent awards suchas the Ardán de la Zona Franca de Vigofor Well Managed Company 2019 and 2020, and Empresa Gacela 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, which proves the rapid and sustained growth of the company.