Brussels, Belgium – BIA Separations, Austrian-Slovenian developer and manufacturer of CIM® short monolithic chromatographic columns optimized for the separation and purification of large bio-molecules on laboratory and industrial scale, announces that it has received the KAPPA-HEALTH AWARD 2011 for being one of the most successful research-intensive and high-tech SMEs in European Union.

It received the award because it demonstrated during its participation in Framework 6 & 7 Projects that it is “a model of the wide range of successful research-intensive SMEs participating in an EU co-funded project”.

This award was the result of KAPPA-Health’s 3-year inquiry among 83 healthcare research-intensive SMEs, which participated in 120 FP6 and FP7 projects. The project’s goal was to identify what makes a biotech SME successful in terms of participation in EU co-funded research and how this joint research results in successful commercialization of the products/services.

Commenting on the award’s presentation, BIA Separations Downstream Processing Manager, Dr. Matjaž Peterka, said “Once again, we have demonstrated that combing our expertise with CIM® monolith technology leads to significant biomedical discoveries which can be brought quickly and efficiently to the market. The award recognizes that BIA Separations is on the path to becoming a successful large enterprise”.

“European Commission DG Research & Innovation has developed many useful instruments to enable very intensive R&D in SMEs, several very fruitful for our company. Unfortunately the instruments which should follow to enable SMEs fast growth to important global players are still missing or do not work at all, e.g. the Risk Sharing Financial Facility loan scheme being developed by EC and European Investment Bank is just the opposite, it is killing instrument for the SMEs. Lacking this part of the financial instruments many excellent R&D project of the SMEs end dead and billions of tax money are lost forever”, said Dr. Aleš Štrancar, CEO of BIA Separations.