March 14 (SeeNews) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it picked ten Serbian companies to receive a funding totalling 150,000 euro ($185,400) under its Green Innovation Voucher scheme.
The financing will be provided to small businesses for innovative climate-friendly solutions and aims to increase the innovation capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the field of green technologies and resource efficiency, the EBRD said in a statement on Tuesday.
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The ten Serbian companies that won the vouchers are Biofor System, PG Marko Carnic, Dogama, Muvaround, Dorado, Energia gas and power, GOMMA Line, NS Koncept, Avalon Partners and ESENSA, the EBRD said.
A few of the selected projects will support development of sustainable and precision agriculture that is very important for Serbian economy. For example, the Institute BioSense will test its novel irrigation system together with Marko Carnic, the leading producer of carrots. The smart irrigation system will incorporate satellite images, soil maps, wireless field sensors and weather models and suggests when to water plants; it will increase harvests and conserve water, the bank noted.
Some of the other projects aim to improve waste management and reuse of waste materials such as waste plastic, glass and expanded polystyrene. Waste management is one of the most urgent environmental issues for Serbia, the EBRD said.
The second call for applications will be open to companies from March 13 until April 30, the bank added.
The Green Innovation Vouchers are grants that help SMEs to cover 90% of the eligible research and development service costs, up to 20,000 euro. The scheme is funded by the Austrian Delivering Resource Efficiency Investments Programme (DRIVE). The implementation of the scheme is supported by the Central European Initiative).
The scheme was officially launched on December 5, 2017.
($=0.8091 euro)