Central Hub to draw together Agtech Potential in Ireland

An award of €3m is to help to help turn UCD Lyons Farm into the central hub for agtech research in Ireland. NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin, received the money from the Regional Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) to develop an AgTech Connector Innovation Hub at the County Kildare farm.

The hub aims to bring together Ireland’s wider AgTech community and help with the launching and scaling of AgTech companies by providing access to on-farm research collaboration opportunities, as well as a location to test and trial their products and services in a real-world environment.

Also available will be access to dedicated acceleration programmes and incubation facilities.

The farm, located between Celbridge and Newcastle, has 250 hectares of land comprising of dairy, beef, sheep, equine, crop and environmental research, teaching and commercial facilities.

Tom Flanagan, UCD Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation at NovaUCD, said the nationwide programme would act as “a pipeline of early-stage high-potential innovations, entrepreneurs and new ventures”.

“The global ag-tech sector is ripe for disruption and Ireland now has a great opportunity to leverage its unique assets to develop innovative, job-creating ag-tech companies with global ambition,” he added.

Professor Alex Evans, Head, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science said: “This is a very exciting development for UCD Lyons Farm and the many agriculture and food entrepreneurs that we engage with. It builds on UCD’s success in translating knowledge into impact and will greatly stimulate our agriculture, food and environmental science research and education activities.”

The REDF is an initiative of the Government under Project Ireland 2040 and it aligns with the Future Jobs Ireland framework.