These are the most promising Industry 4.0 start-ups from Central and Eastern Europe

The EIT Manufacturing Co-Location Center (CLC) East awarded the most promising start-ups and scale-ups from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with solutions for the manufacturing industry at its BoostUp! CLC East 2022 competition in Vienna.

Vienna, 2 June 2022. Already for the second year in a row, EIT Manufacturing hosted its “Manufacturing Day” within the ViennaUP, one of the largest start-up festivals in Europe, organized by the Vienna Business Agency. The Manufacturing Day is an event for and with start-ups from the manufacturing industry to elaborate on new technologies, discuss latest trends and provide networking opportunities with corporates and investors. EIT Manufacturing is a knowledge and innovation community (KIC) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, that aims to foster manufacturing innovation and to bring together European manufacturing stakeholders from industry, education, and research. One important part of their mission is to support young companies in the field of manufacturing to grow and to help them develop their businesses.

The Viennese branch of EIT Manufacturing, the so-called Co-Location Center (CLC) East coordinates the KIC’s activities in twelve countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In specifically these twelve countries, the CLC East in cooperation with its network partner Vienna Business Agency launched a call for start-ups and scale-ups with solutions in the manufacturing industry. While 16 selected start-ups and scale-ups from this “Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition”-Call were invited to an all-expenses-paid stay in Vienna during the course of the ViennaUP’22 festival, only ten of them were chosen by an expert jury to pitch their solutions at the BoostUp! CLC East 2022 competition during the “Manufacturing Day” on 1st June 2022. Almost 300 participants attended the Manufacturing Day in Vienna and online.

With its activities, EIT Manufacturing addresses the most pressing challenges of the European manufacturing industry and focuses on supporting innovations that enable green and sustainable manufacturing, circular economy, CO2-reduction, as well as flexible production systems. Many of the start-ups and scale-ups selected to pitch in the BoostUp! 2022 CLC East competition provide solutions to particularly address these topics, using Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Automation, Sensor Technology, IoT or Big Data. The solutions presented will help the manufacturing sector to improve industrial performance and reduce costs, to automate business processes, or to prototype and customize products. The innovations can be applied in various areas of production from fabric processing and garment production to the inspection of industrial equipment or the digitalisation of the coating industry.

Winners awarded with cash and services prizes

The five finalists in the category “SwitchOn”, EIT Manufacturing’s programme for early-stage manufacturing companies, competed for a cash prize of EUR 5,000 provided by the Vienna Business Agency. RoboTwin, a start-up based in the Czech Republic, convinced the jury with their solution for automizing and digitalizing manufacturing in the coating industry. The other finalists in the category SwitchOn were Campfire Solutions (nista.io) from Austria, IMM-Data from Hungary, Senseven from Austria, and Silana from Austria. SwitchOn winner Megi Mejdrechova of RoboTwin says: “It was a pleasure to be part of Discover Vienna:Manufacturing Edition together with the other start-ups and scale-ups focused on Manufacturing! I very much enjoyed meeting all those inspiring people and learning from their stories, sharing common hurdles or worries on our way to entrepreneurship, and also sharing the motivation and enthusiasm to make the industry better with our innovations! We at RoboTwin are introducing motion imitating robotics and with that we automate and digitalize manufacturing in the coating industry. We are teaching robots how to spray-paint by simply showing them the movement of the painter’s hand once. The highlight for us was pitching in front of the jury at the BoostUp! CLC East competition and winning the first place in the SwitchOn category.”

In the category “Supercharge”, the EIT Manufacturing programme for expanding scale-ups, RVmagnetics from Slovakia, that has developed the world’s smallest custom passive sensor, stood out among the other finalists: Adapta Robotics from Romania, Pragma-IoT from Greece, Robotiq.ai from Croatia, and SaleSqueze from Slovenia. RVmagnetics was awarded with a service package from aws Industry-Startup.Net, consisting of introductions to the aws corporate network. “I would like to thank the jury and the organizers for the award. Winning in the category Supercharge is very rewarding, but it is also a commitment for the future. Sharing our story is possible thanks to the trust of our clients and thanks to the R&D team of RVmagnetics to bring their projects to reality.” says Vladimir Marhefka, Member of the Board of RVmagnetics, winner of Supercharge.

Jasmin Moradzadeh (aws), Vladimir Marhefka (RVmagnetics), Megi Mejdrechova (RoboTwin), Eva Czernohorszky (Vienna Business Agency), Jasmina Popovska (EIT Manufacturing CLC East) – Photocredit (c) Matthias Heschl

Apart from the prizes provided by the BoostUp! supporters Vienna Business Agency and aws Industry-Startup.Net, the winners of both categories get a fast-track ticket to EIT Manufacturing’s business creation services and deal flow for funding of up to 300,000 Euro in addition to access-to-market-support for more than 12 months from the EIT Manufacturing Business Creation experts.

“We saw a great variety of innovative solutions for the manufacturing sector, from new technologies for energy efficiency and connectivity to user-friendly education of workers executing complex tasks. The teams coming from all across Central and Eastern Europe showed a high level of quality, so I want to congratulate not only the winners, but also all other teams that pitched in the competition” says Jasmina Popovska, Senior Business Creation Manager at EIT Manufacturing CLC East and Initiator and Programme Coordinator of Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition and BoostUp! CLC East. “Our goal is to promote and to create an environment that enables open innovation in the manufacturing sector in Europe. With our programmes, we try to build bridges between corporates and start-ups and help them bring their innovations faster to the market,” she elaborates further.

While the winners of the pitching competition BoostUp! 2022 CLC East got awarded with special prizes, all 16 participating teams of the Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition 2022 programme will continue to receive support from EIT Manufacturing and the Vienna Business Agency. To facilitate fast access to the Austrian market, networking events and introduction sessions with the supporters of the programme, among others A1 Group, B&C Holding, Concircle, Factory Hub, K-Businesscom, Tele Haase, TTTech Industrial, and voestalpine High Performance Metals, were already organized during their stay in Vienna.