Avoca set for major Irish and UK expansion

Aramark, which has agreed to buy the luxury cafe and retail chain for €60m, will consider bringing it to US.

Avoca’s new owner Aramark is to finance an aggressive expansion of the brand in Ireland before taking it to the UK. The multinational caterer, which bought the cafe chain from the Pratt family for about €60 million, may also open outlets in the US.

Over the next two years, Avoca is to add five or six new cafe and retail stores to its existing network of 11 in Ireland, according to Aramark Ireland’s chief executive, Donal O’Brien.

Mr O’Brien mentioned Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford as potential locations. Avoca outlets are mostly clustered around Dublin and Wicklow. It also operates from Kerry, Belfast and has a retail-only store in Connemara.

Read more at irishtimes.com/business

ICON Partners with iCardiac Technologies to Provide an Earlier and More Precise Method for Evaluating Cardiac Safety

ICON Certified as a Partner of iCardiac’s Early Precision QT® Program

Dublin, Ireland, 3^rd November, 2015 – ICON plc, (NASDAQ: ICLR) a global provider of drug development solutions and services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, today announced that its clinical research unit in San Antonio is a certified and preferred site in iCardiac’s Early Precision QT Program. The certification enables ICON to offer iCardiac’s Early Precision QT® services for evaluating the cardiac safety of new compounds in Phase I clinical trials. This solution provides clients with an earlier and more precise assessment of the safety risk of their drug and potentially eliminates the need for a separate Thorough QT (TQT) study in later stages of development.

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ICON currently, operates from 77 locations in 38 countries and has approximately 11,700 employees. In Ireland, they employ over 1,000 staff from our global HQ in Dublin and from our office in Limerick.

Some highlights from quarter 3 include:

– An announcement with IBM, using the company’s Watson technology, that revolutionises patient recruitment in clinical trials
– A partnership with Mereo BioPharma, a specialty biopharma company, where ICON will be the sole provider of clinical development services to Mereo.
–  Nominated for the Best Technological Development in Clinical Trials by Scrip. Winners will be announced in December.

To read more, please click HERE.

New €500,000 Enterprise Ireland fund aimed at overseas entrepreneurs and Irish diaspora

A new Enterprise Ireland fund will make up to €500,000 available to 10 overseas entrepreneurs and Irish diaspora who decide to set up their businesses in Ireland.