The European Commission has announced the first results of its new SME Instrument, launched under Horizon 2020 to help innovative small- or medium-sized companies get their ideas to the market. Aurelia Turbines Oy is one of the Finnish SME’s to receive funding from a highly competitive field of innovative European companies from which funding was granted for fewer than 6% of the applicants. Spinverse Oy assisted Aurelia Turbines in selecting the most suitable funding instrument and helped to prepare the application.
Aurelia Turbines is developing and manufacturing two-stage gas turbines with the capacity of 450 kW. The company was incorporated in 2013 and it is combining the R&D know-how reached in Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) in the area of high speed turbines, generators and electrical drives. The new microturbine has an outstanding efficiency towards competing technologies and the management of Aurelia Turbines comments that the funding will be used to plan the roadmap for a successful roll-out of the products to the global markets.
“The SME Instrument is very competitive and only the best of the best can succeed. Successful application requires a strong focus on the business opportunity, high level of innovation, and a well written application”, says Dr. Pirjo Pasanen, a certified EU consultant from Spinverse.
In the Horizon 2020 programme, the European Commission is selecting potentially disruptive small businesses to fund and support as part of the SME Instrument. Worth around €3 billion over seven years, it offers fast and simple grants for business innovation feasibility studies (Phase 1) and demonstration projects (Phase 2). Applications can be submitted at any time but are evaluated four times each year. The next cut-off dates for evaluation are 24 September 2014 for Phase 1 and 9 October 2014 for Phase 2.