Cork-based firm signs €7.3m deal

CORK-based scientific research and technology company Glantreo has signed a $10 million (€7.3m) licensing deal with a major US company.

Although details of the other company haven’t been fully disclosed, the tie-in is with a major player in the area of chromatography – the name given to collective laboratory techniques for the separation of mixtures and a big part of the manufacturing process in areas like the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Glantreo, a spin-out company from University College Cork (UCC) that was established six years ago, classes itself as a high-tech materials company and focuses on commercialising the materials/science chemical separations research carried out in Irish universities.

With this deal, Glantreo will licence out its own technology, which speeds up and improves the separation process.

Under the terms of the agreement, UCC will also earn licensing fees and royalties on the company’s sales and sub-licensing revenues.

“Chromatography is a method to separate, purify and quantify chemical mixtures and it is used in almost every lab, wherever chemicals are involved,” said Glantreo’s chief technical officer Dr John Hanrahan.

“Within chromatography, the actual separating is done by a packed column of silica particles. We have come up with a new way of making these silica particles which increases the speed and the capacity at which chromatography can be carried out.”

Glantreo’s grand plan is to become a conduit between university research and commercial end-users – the big players in the pharmaceutical and food sectors.