Founder of the Roll Out Vegetable Garden Company Cara Tremayne has won the CIT Entrepreneur of the Year title and a €4,000 prize at the 2015 Cork CIT Prize for Innovation Awards.
From Dunmanway in Co Cork, Tremayne is a fourth year horticulture student at Cork Institute of Technology.
The idea behind the business is to create a coco coir woven matting which is impregnated with vegetable seeds. The objective is that the matting works just like a roll out lawn but is more productive.
Tremayne has worked in a garden centre for over ten years and also maintained a manor house vegetable garden for over four years.
The Most Innovative Award of €2,000 went to Votive Solutions, designers of Stride which is a drop foot device used for gait abnormality. The device is used to lift the front of the foot when taking a step to avoid excessive lifting of the foot or dragging of the toes while walking.
Best Business Plan and €1,500 was awarded to Gladium Medical, which is a medical needle guidance system that allows needle positioning and stability for common intravenous operations to reduce user error and improve operator safety and confidence.
Best Presentation Pitch of €1,500 was awarded to Sous Feed which is a company that aims to produce a high quality instant food product that is healthy and also affordable. The student who developed the product is studying in the Department of Tourism and Hospitality at CIT.
The Nimbus Centre at CIT awarded a €5,000 product development prize to Sock-On, a device that can help someone to put on their own socks, if otherwise unable.
It was inspired by a gap in the market and medical need identified by a member of the development team, who is a qualified occupational therapist.
