Darwin Bioprospecting Excellence is one of the eight most outstanding Spanish innovations of 2022, according to the expert jury of the Quality Innovation Awards in Spain.

The National Association of Excellence Promoting Centers (CEX), composed of public and private organizations from eleven autonomous communities, has awarded the prizes to the eight Spanish innovations winners of the national phase of the Quality Innovation Awards, QIA. The awarded companies will represent Spain in the international edition of the QIA, an international competition created in 2007 by Excellence Finland to promote innovative projects with the aim of sharing experiences, giving projection to the best, and contributing to increasing the competitiveness of participating countries.

DARWIN, QIA Award for the most innovative SME

One of the eight awards, presented on November 22nd at the CSIC, was for DARWIN. Jordi Sebastià, Director of Institutional Relations of IVACE, was in charge of presenting the QIA 2022 Spain Award in the SME Innovation category to Manuel Porcar, CEO of Darwin Bioprospecting Excellence. The biotechnological company is dedicated to the search for microorganisms with industrial applications using an innovative bioprospecting process, from sampling to characterization and the production and implementation of the solution.

The applications have been evaluated by 60 experts convened by CEX, and the innovation criteria evaluated have been: novelty, usefulness, learning, customer orientation, and effectiveness. The entities awarded with the different QIA Awards have been Spika Tech (Potential innovation), Thermowaste (Circular economy innovation and zero carbon footprint), Digital Anatomics (Innovation in the healthcare sector), University of Zaragoza Library (Innovation category in the educational sector), Moso3D (Innovation in micro-enterprise and startup), Darwin Bioprospecting Excellence (Innovation in SME), and Global Spedition (Innovation category in large enterprise).

The winning companies in this national phase advance to the international phase where the jury – composed of the different participating countries – chooses the winners in each category of the Quality Innovation Award.