Pera Technology wins Horizon 2020 EU Grant Funding for The Smart Actuator Company (SACO)

Meeting at the BVAA Spring Conference leads to successful funding bid

One very successful outcome from the BVAA Spring Conference at Celtic Manor in May was the coming together of the leap® team at Pera Technology and The Smart Actuator Company ltd (SACO).

Delegates at the Conference will recall that the first speaker on the program was Tony O’Donnell, the Chairman of SACO, who spoke about their first ultralow energy electric actuator product, the SmartAct®-1, which is based on the patented RIFT Technology motor drive design. He also outlined their plans to introduce both a smaller and a larger actuator, to give them coverage from 20 Nm valves right through to 400 Nm valves on direct mountings.

Next up was Marina Roberts, leap® Regional Manager from Pera Technology who spoke about ‘Financing Innovation through the world’s largest New Product Development fund’. She gave a presentation on the Horizon 2020 research and innovation EU grant fund of €80 billion and explained how €3.3 billion of this is aimed specifically at small and medium sized enterprises.

Tony and Marina both liked what the other had to say so much that they decided almost there and then that an application would be submitted to the European Union for grant funding.

The leap® team at Pera Technology put the Horizon2020 Phase 1 application together and submitted it in June. There were over 2200 applications from companies across Europe. There was then an anxious wait until the news came through in early August that SACO were one of only 155 companies to be successful.

‘We were obviously delighted with the news but not completely surprised. The leap® team at Pera Technology were very professional in their approach and their preparation of the application’ comments Tony O’Donnell.

‘They asked all the right questions, even the difficult ones, and their final submission was excellent. I was quietly confident that we would be successful.
We have lived with our RIFT Technology now for almost four years and know how game changing it will be for motor driven systems in general, and of course electric actuators in particular’.

Marina Roberts had previously explained that the Horizon 2020 scheme is grant funding from the European Union and does not have to be match funded by SACO. As the leap® team put it ‘all that the people at SACO have to do now is keep doing what they have been doing so far; peddling like mad!’

Horizon 2020 provides for individual SME’s to receive up to €2.55 million and is based on specific projects by the applicant. In the case of SACO the expansion of their product range and the duplication of their market penetration across the world were at the core of their application.

Tony predicts that this initial success will be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between SACO and Pera Technology and thanks the BVAA conference gods for bringing the two together!

The Smart Actuator Co. Ltd
Tel: 01684 565709
Email: sales@smartact.co.uk

Published: 18th November 2014