The food ingredients company Kerry Group will develop a €100million global technology and innovation centre in Naas, Co. Kildare. The centre will employ 800 staff, many of whom will be third-level graduates. The investment is part-funded by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Enterprise Ireland (EI).
This is an extraordinary development for the food industry in Ireland and is the consequence of an extensive national investment in agri-food research. In the past few years, EI has fostered a state-of-the-art research partnership between a network of academic institutions and the food industry, including the Kerry Group.
UCD’s research programme in this area (Food Health Ireland) is led by Professor Mike Gibney and Professor Dolores O'Riordan of the UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science. Likewise, UCD has made a major investment in food science including the development of the PRTLI-4 UCD Institute of Food and Health in Phase I of the UCD Science Centre, which is also led by Mike Gibney. The Institute includes specialised facilities for human nutrition studies and a world-class taste lab.
In another development, UCD and Teagasc, the national agri-food research body, have formed a strategic partnership under the leadership of Professor Maurice Boland. These programmes have transformed food science by providing access to cutting-edge technologies not available in industry, including synthetic chemistry, proteomics and bioinformatics, technologies rarely associated with the food industry, but which are central to identifying novel functional foods.
Article written by Prof Des Fitzgerald, Vice-President for Research, University College Dublin
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