It pays to know about wine when you live in Spain’s La Rioja region, where grapes have been harvested since the Phoenicians. A small biotech company from Logroño sells nano-biosensors to the food and wine industries. Thanks to the Enterprise Europe Network, they are now testing two portable analysers made by Biorealis, a high-tech company from Bratislava, Slovakia.
The Enterprise Europe Network, with some 600 partner organisations in more than 50 countries, matches SMEs with the right partners using efficient tools, including database and matchmaking events. The Spanish Biotech Company Sensara was matched with Biorealis with the help of Enrique Esteban of Network partner organisations Agencia de Desarrollo Económico de La Rioja (ADER) in Logroño.
Esteban sourced a technology profile of Biorealis prepared by BIC Bratislava, a Network contact point in Slovakia. Biorealis is a Slovak wine specialist that makes measurement instruments for distillers, brewers and the wine industry. Biorealis already sells Omnilab, its portable devices for measuring components in wine and must, at home and in France and Italy. They seemed a perfect fit for Sensera.
With help from the Network's Slovak contact point, Esteban got the two companies in touch and in business. "As a small start-up, we wouldn't have heard of the new technology without ADER," says Sensara's CEO Jose Manuel Ochoa.
"The Network is a very useful service," says Miroslav Streďanský of Biorealis, who was keen to find new markets. Two models of his company's portable analysers - a cheaper one and a more complex version - are now being tested in Spain.
The Network works with companies over the longterm, understanding their needs and finding opportunities. "This was an obvious match, which resulted from previous services provided to our client," says Peter Kopkáš, from Business Innovation Centre Bratislava, the Network partner in Slovakia.