Inferneco is an innovative Irish company that identified a new means of sanitising glass neck drinking bottles within the hospitality industry. These bottles are usually visually clean but not sanitised and the only way to completely sanitise bottles is by removing the cap fully. Inferneco identified a novel solution to sanitising the bottles using UV light and worked with the Enterprise Ireland Technology Gateway, Design+ based at IT Carlow to explore how this might be brought to market. The team examined other possible solutions to sanitising bottles and developed a clear research roadmap to design, test and validate the new concept that would be able to sanitise a bottle within two seconds and include a safe sealing system so as not to expose the user to UV light. The project worked across a number of other Technology Gateways with the prototype being sent to CAPPA Gateway in MTU – Cork Campus and the TSSG Gateway at Waterford IT to develop functionality of the device. The company licensed the technology in 2020 and now has 7 prototypes that are being used to approach multiple international breweries in order to raise funding to bring the research to the next phase which is currently underway.
“The research undertaken by IT Carlow went above and beyond the original plan and we are truly grateful for this. The team were great to deal with an did everything to make this project a success for us all. We will be working with IT Carlow again on this journey as we seek to get every pub on the planet to embrace PureNeck. We would strongly recommend IT Carlow and the Innovation Partnership to other companies.” MD at Inferneco – Emmett Hedigan
Published: 2021
Find out more about working with third-level research