Export award for university spin-off IONICON – University of Innsbruck
The Innsbruck-based technology company IONICON, founded by the University of Innsbruck, received the Gold Export Award 2022 this week. The spin-off company develops and sells highly specialized air analysis devices. Customers include renowned scientific institutions, but also industry, mainly in export markets.
On June 27, 2022, the AUSSENWIRTSCHAFT AUSTRIA of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WKO) honored local companies that have achieved outstanding results despite the difficult international framework conditions. This also includes the Innsbrucker Technology company IONICON, which was honored with the export prize in gold in the trades and crafts category. “The award recognizes our enormous export success with the PTR-TOFMS series on the world markets. Last year, the output and sale of devices increased by 75%, and that with an export share of over 99 percent,” says IONICON Managing Director Lukas Märk. “Customers of our air analysis devices include well-known scientific institutions as well as industry, mainly in export markets.” With over 500 PTR-MS instruments sold together with a portfolio of supplementary products and services, IONICON has established itself as a successful company with over 50 employees developed. “With its successful spin-off strategy including investment portfolio and investment management, the University of Innsbruck has a special position in the Austrian university landscape,” emphasizes Rector Tilmann Märk, who himself co-founded this company with his physicist colleague Werner Lindinger in 1998 as a spin-off of the Institute for Ion Physics has had. “We are very pleased that IONICON has developed so successfully since it was founded and has now been recognized for its achievements.”
Wider scope
The PTR-MS technology for trace gas analysis was developed at the University of Innsbruck in the 1990s and brought to market and patented by IONICON. The company’s instruments are currently being used, for example, to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in Asia in breath test devices to detect SARS-CoV-2 infections. In addition, IONICON PTR-TOF-Analyzer makes a small contribution to indoor air monitoring and quality assurance in clean rooms in the semiconductor industry and thus to the creation and expansion of chip production in the currently tight global semiconductor supply capacities. Another pillar of success is PTR-TOF analyzers in air quality monitoring networks to improve air quality in cities and industrial areas worldwide.