The country’s first national centre of excellence for supporting grassroots food businesses to develop and grow was officially opened at Teagasc Athenry.

The Bia Innovator campus will help food businesses through state-of-the-art food production facilities, alongside technological and business supports.

The campus includes nine small business production units, three larger production units, meat and dairy units, education facilities and a podcast suite, among other infrastructure.

Some of the units will be pay for use, while others will be available for lease by micro and small food businesses.

Official opening

An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar officially opened the Bia Innovator campus, located at Teagasc Athenry’s Liam Mellows Campus, on Friday 26 January.

It is expected the campus will drive regional and national growth in Ireland’s agri-food sector.

An Taoiseach said the agri food industry is Ireland’s “most important indigenous export sector”.

“As a country, we have a really good reputation for producing high-quality food.

“As we transition towards more sustainable production, we’re adapting our thinking to stay ahead of the curve, to make sure we have value, equality and a good margin for everything we produce,” he said.

Aims

General manager of the Bia Innovator campus Elaine Donohue said the official opening marked a “critical day for the food industry”.

“We will deal with the food industry from farm to fork. We will have people come through our door as individuals, as businesses starting out, as existing businesses wanting growth and we’re there to help them,” she said.

Donohue outlined three key aims of the campus as innovating and adding value to the food sector, facilitating sustainable food businesses and improving the standard of manufacturing in the Irish food industry.

“We will work primarily with the grassroots food sector, so an awful lot of micro and small businesses. We want to really strengthen that foundation for the future. We want to add value and see that growth coming through.

“The second thing is our sustainability for the future. There’s been a huge amount of flux in the industry, it has been a rollercoaster over the past number of years. We want our businesses to be sustainable in the future, including economically sustainable. We want them to have a good livelihood.

“Thirdly, we want to improve the standard of manufacturing for the food industry in Ireland,” she said.

Donoghue added that she would like to see the businesses supported by the Bia Innovator campus exporting their food products in the future.

The Bia Innovator campus is a not-for-profit company with a voluntary board of directors led by chair Peter Feeney.

More than €8m has been provided in capital funding from its partners, which include Enterprise Ireland, the Department of Rural and Community Development, Galway County Council, Teagasc, Galway Rural Development/LEADER and the Western Development Commission to deliver the project.