Manufacturing & Supply Chain

Taoglas secured €633,000 funding  from the European Space Agency (ESA), Minister of State for Training, Skills & Innovation John Halligan announced at a visit to the company’s headquarters in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, on Friday.

The funding contributes towards a complex research, development and commercialisation of Taoglas’ ZRM project, which combines the antenna elements, data router and Wi-Fi transceiver into a technology platform to provide an “Always Online” solution for fixed and mobile applications.

“I am delighted to see a company in the South East winning such a high value contract from the European Space Agency,” Halligan said. “It points to the excellence in product development achieved by Taoglas, and is a superb example of how a growing number of Irish companies are benefitting from Irish Government investment in ESA”.

Taoglas is a 100% Irish-owned group founded by Ronan Quinlan and Dermot O’Shea, Joint Managing Directors. Taoglas is an innovative technology group delivering antenna products and radio frequency (RF) solutions to global brands. Taoglas is a leader in IoT antenna technology with subsidiaries and world class design, engineering and testing facilities in Wexford, San Diego, Munich, and Taoyuan County, Taiwan.

Enterprise Ireland ESA Programme Manager Tony McDonald said:“Taoglas represents one of a growing number of Irish companies benefiting from ESA support, in the expanding IoT market. We expect to see further participation by Enterprise Ireland client companies in this specific sub sector in 2017”.

With the securing of this funding from ESA, Taoglas have been able to employ six highly skilled engineers to develop the technology platform, capable of covering Cellular LTE MIMO, GNSS, dual band Wi-Fi MIMO and Iridium communications in a compact form factor at a highly competitive price. They believe the technology platform to be a disruptive technology in the IoT marketplace and have received significant interest from major multinational router companies to fully commercialise the design.

“As a customer-focused Group, Taoglas specialise in understanding and responding to the real needs of customers,” Taoglas founder Ronan Quinlan said. “We provide an entire antenna design and supply chain solution for wireless products to reduce our end customer’s product development time and component costs. Current solutions for complete connectivity utilise separate routers, antennas and multiple cables. They are complex and costly to install and may not be 100% reliable due to the cable insertion losses. We identified and addressed a need from our customers for a technology platform that is versatile and scalable with the back-haul capabilities to provide sufficient bandwidth for mobile applications, such as, rail, buses and marine.”

Taoglas are currently working on the next evolution of the platform and the Enterprise Ireland-backed company plans to recruit more engineers over the next twelve months to expand its workforce at its Wexford facility, bringing further employment to its headquarters and benefiting the local community.