Ireland gets marine business innovation centre

The Entrepreneur Ship, a new centre that seeks to optimise the opportunities of the blue economy for Ireland and accelerate job creation in this sector, has officially been opened in Cork, Ireland.

Speaking at the opening of The Entrepreneur Ship, Simon Coveney (pictured), Minister for Agriculture, Food, the Marine and Defence, said: “Business incubators, accelerators, and co-creation spaces have been proven to support and fast-track start-up companies seeking to exploit emerging market opportunities.

“The Entrepreneur Ship is the first dedicated marine innovation centre in Ireland providing companies with access to an ecosystem of world class training, talent, research and test bed facilities through the IMERC partners in Cork. This unique space will provide new and existing companies in the maritime sector with the supports that they need to grow and innovate.”

Companies based in The Entrepreneur Ship are located in the IMERC Cluster in Lower Cork Harbour, adjacent to the National Maritime College of Ireland (NMCI), the Irish Defence Forces Naval Base and University College Cork’s new Beaufort building which houses the MaREI Research Centre and the LIR National Ocean Test Facility.

Val Cummins, Director of IMERC, said: “The Entrepreneur Ship is a place of convergence between entrepreneurial talent, and the explosion of new ideas and technologies coming from areas such as robotics, big data, biotechnology, power generation, cyber security, unmanned systems, and power storage as they relate to our ocean and energy systems. The objective is to grow this enterprise dimension to add to the critical mass of training, research and naval expertise already in the cluster.”

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Image: twitter/Simon Coveney