Edwards named Investor of the Year 2010 in the Greatest Innovation Potential category

2 Nov. 2011 | CzechInvest | The company won for a project involving the construction of facilities for research and development.

The Teal R&D Edwards research and development centre in the Lutín manufacturing complex in the Olomouc region has all of the prerequisites to become a research and development centre of European significance. Edwards is a leading global provider of vacuum technologies for industrial, scientific and semi-conductor applications. The project is fundamentally connected with innovations and therefore the company was judged to be the investor with the greatest innovation potential which decided to invest in the Czech Republic last year.

The award for second place in the Greatest Innovation Potential category was presented to GENERI BIOTECH s.r.o., which undertook the further development of its research centre and increase of its capacity through balanced investment in instruments, purchase of know-how and wage costs, especially for young research workers. The company, which has been operating on the market since 1995, is involved especially in molecular biology and genetic testing in medicine.

The third-place winner in the Greatest Innovation Potential category was the Řež Nuclear Research Institute, which expanded its research and development capacities by building a new PET Centre. The centre was established for the purpose of development and innovation of products in the area of human medicine. The research institute in Řež has extensive experience in the area of production of radiopharmaceuticals, which it supplies to a full range of nuclear-medicine facilities in the Czech Republic and abroad.

Investor of the Year is a competition organised annually by CzechInvest and the Association for Foreign Investment in cooperation with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic. This year marked the eleventh anniversary of the event. The main partners of this year’s Investor of the Year competition are ČEZ and ČSOB, while the partner is the Office Islands project of HOCHTIEF Development Czech Republic. Supporting partners are the QUIX agency and Zátiší Catering. Media support for the competition was provided by the weeklyEuro, Czech Radio 1 – Radio Journal, Stavitel (Builder) and Project & Property magazines, and the monthlies Parlament – Vláda – Samospráva (Parliament – Government – Local Administration) and Development News.

The competing investment projects are evaluated by a committee composed of representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Association for Foreign Investment and CzechInvest. The celebratory announcement of the winners took place – together with the announcement of the results of the Business Property of the Year 2010 competition – on Tuesday, 1 November 2011, at the Eco-Technical Museum in Prague.