Q-Interline receives EU grant       

Being a high-tech company in Region Zealand, Denmark, Q-Interline was identified as a potential candidate to receive support from the European Union to develop the export business and create jobs outside of Copenhagen. The most suitable programmes were Horizon 2020 and the SME Instrument programme. With help from Nordic Innovators an application was submitted, and the company was granted a contribution from the European Union in the summer of 2017. The project ran from October 2017 until June 2019, with the main objective of commercialising our InSight Pro inline FT-NIR analyser concept. The commercialisation of InSight Pro commenced after the conclusion of the project in 2019, and we have by now installed the unique inline analyser concept in nine countries in Europe and North America.

What is Horizon 2020?

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever, with nearly €80 billion of funding available over seven years (2014 to 2020). Seen as a means to drive economic growth and create jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the Members of the European Parliament. They agreed that research is an investment in our future and thus placed it at the heart of the EU’s blueprint for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and job creation.

By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is helping to achieve these goals with its emphasis on excellent science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The aim is to ensure that Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.

Project Overview

The official acronym of the project is “InSight Pro” and the official description in Horizon 2020 is “Commercialising an Innovative and Autonomous Analytical Solution Combining On-Line Measurements with Intelligent Cloud Functionalities for Adding Value to Dairy Products.” It literally means a new innovative on-line solution which is easier to use and maintain. Read more here.

The overall objective of the InSight Pro project is to upscale, pilot and commercialise the first complete on-line analytical solution with integrated cloud services, which will significantly improve the quality control of dairy products, maximising their added value, and making all hardware and application maintenance autonomous. This will eventually result in a major advancement in the current state-of-the-art.

Purpose of the InSight Pro project

Although the export value of dairy products is increasing, the world market share of the EU dairy industry is decreasing. Within the EU, companies mostly innovate on products and less in marketing, organisation and process, resulting in resource inefficient food production and processing.

“A product like InSight Pro, with less complexity and installation price and hassle, has a high potential for many installations around the world,” reads the Central Management statement of Arla Foods (Sept. 2016). The competitiveness of the global milk and dairy industry forces producers and processors to take strategic actions for quality control and product optimisation, to enhance their competitiveness in production costs,

facilities and safety. The new product will bring a paradigm shift in the way dairy producers control their production processes, in a simple, cost-effective and user-friendly manner, while at the same time improving overall economic performance.

Our patented InSight Pro solution is a new price/value effective dairy analyser based on the best available Fourier Transform Near Infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy technology, combined with our innovative and reliable sampling techniques. To find additional information about the EU milk and dairy industry, please click here.