The Larnaca Water Partners desalination company, the documents storage facility Fileminders and the Department of Road Transport’s online system for road tax renewals were the winners of the 2008 Innovation Awards presented last week.
The competition is a joint initiative between the Employers and Industrialists Federation (OEV), the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, the Research Promotion Foundation and the University of Cyprus and aims to promote innovation in Cyprus, as well as to increase competitiveness and productivity.
The Innovation Award is granted in four different sectors: Primary, Manufacturing, Services and the Public Sector. No award was granted to the Primary Sector since the Evaluation Committee ruled that no contestant company met the specified criteria.
The Innovation Award for the Manufacturing Sector was awarded to Larnaca Water Partners Ltd. for the development and implementation of a membrane management system. The Services Award went to Fileminders Ltd. for the operation of a modern records management system.
Finally, the Award for the Public Sector went to the Department of Road Transport of the Ministry of Communications and Works, for the development and implementation of an electronic system for the registration of motor vehicles and motor bikes via the internet. The website allows for online payments of the six-monthly or annual road taxes through the JCCsmart platform of the credit-card clearing house, while the Department’s site also has an online check of CO2 emissions, and an online application system for the withdrawal of old cars.
President Dimitris Christofias presented the awards at a ceremony held at the Hilton Cyprus and congratulated the winners emphasising the importance of innovation to the economy. He congratulated all the contestants, as well as OEV for its initiative.
Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Antonis Paschalides, the President of OEV, Dr. Andreas Pittas and the chairman of the evaluation committee for the awards, Dr. Andreas Moleskis also addressed the event.
This competition is unique as it is the only one of its kind with European Union member states.
Larnaca Water Partners
Receiving the award on behalf of the Larnaca-based desalination plant was its director, Dr. Eirineos Koutsakos. The plant, designed and built by IDE Technologies Ltd of Israel in 2001, relies on approximately 7,000 membranes to filter the sea water and to make it drinkable. Research by LWP in the field of the membrane management system (MMS) helped improve the efficiency of the primary process of the water to avoid a secondary process for at least six months improving the desalination plant’s output by 7.5%, raising production from 16,900 tonnes to 18,200 tonnes in 2007.
Furthermore, a further 2-3% savings were achieved in energy savings and lower CO2 emissions.
The desalination plant is currently operating around the clock producing 50 tonnes a day.
Fileminders
As the records management market undergoes rapid transformation on a worldwide scale, customers demand sophisticated information management as well as fast retrieval, tracking and more active management of their business documents via the Internet. Since 2003, Fileminders has helped store records offsite, resulting in 40-60% savings over storing the same records in-house.
The system developed by Fileminders also helps in disaster planning, while documents in special boxes or scanned in electronic form can be retrieved and prepare for delivery within two hours of an emergency.
Furthermore, the company’s Active File Management specialises in open shelf file storage solutions for healthcare and insurance industries including offsite patient and medical records storage, x-ray film management and other services. Clients include hospital, healthcare facilities, government agencies and law firms.
