CimArk

About Us

The Ark: promoting innovation in the Valais

The Ark Foundation provides practical assistance to help enterprises increase their competitiveness. Its aim is to build a dynamic and diverse economy within the canton of Valais. The Ark is the product of the local authorities’ strategy of creating a science and technology park in the Valais.

The particular features of this park are that it is spread across seven different sites, and focuses on three specific areas:

  • Information and communication sciences – Digitalisation
  • Lifes sciences
  • Energy and environment

 

The technology parks in the Valais:

BioArk (Monthey)
BioArk is a technology site specifically dedicated to life sciences. With its specialised facilities and network of expertise, it enables SMEs and start-ups working in the fields of biotechnology and diagnostics to realise their business opportunities. So it is the ideal place for developing your business or for transforming your project into an industrial and commercial reality.

BioArk supplies the necessary services and equipment to facilitate the industrialisation and commercialisation of specific products. In particular, since the end of 2015, the site is now home to two development platforms. The first of these is dedicated to rapid diagnostics tests and the second, to the manufacture of the new biological medicines.

www.bioark.ch info@bioark.ch

IdeArk (Martigny)
IdeArk specialises in multimodal interactions and management of multimedia information. It transforms ideas into industrial reality through commercial development of promising new technologies, particularly those originating from the Idiap research institute.

To achieve this, it acts as the interface between the Idiap and other academic and economic partners. It encourages the creation of start-ups and facilitates the development of business opportunities related to the management of multimedia information and man-machine interfaces.

www.ideark.ch info@ideark.ch

BlueArk Entremont (Le Châble)

The BlueArk Entremont Innovation Hub was established with one aim in particular: to offer a full-scale outdoor laboratory for the fields of water and environment. The Ark Foundation, Altis SA and the municipalities of Bagnes, Bovernier, Sembrancher and Vollèges have set up an innovation hub

At the BlueArk Entremont Innovation Hub, The Ark Foundation and its partners are creating an outdoor laboratory with the facilities necessary to fulfil its purpose: to stimulate, develop and support innovation, with local need as the starting point and to enable innovative projects to be implemented quickly through testing in real environments.

www.blueark.ch  info@blueark.ch

PhytoArk (Conthey)

PhytoArk is a technology site specifically for companies whose core activity involves the commercial exploitation of natural ingredients. PhytoArk is aimed at startups, service companies and manufacturing SMEs that produce high-added-value products for the ingredients, cosmetics, food, health-food and plant-based pharmaceuticals industries.

PhytoArk supports companies and startups throughout the process of mass-producing products based on natural ingredients, from conceptualisation to placing them on the market, and including formulation, production of a pilot batch, and regulatory matters.

www.phytoark.ch info@phytoark.ch

Campus Energypolis (Sion)

The Energypolis Campus is a technological site at the centre of the town of Sion. Here, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL – Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) rub shoulders on a daily basis with young start-ups supported by The Ark Foundation. Researchers and students from the HES-SO Valais-Wallis will soon be arriving on the site too, making Energypolis an important place of synergy between pure research, applied research and entrepreneurship.

By 2020, the Energypolis Campus will be home to more than a thousand specialists in the fields of energy, biotechnology and health.

www.energypolis.ch  info@energypolis.ch

TechnoArk (Sierre)

TechnoArk develops business opportunities related to information and communication technology, and particularly the Internet of things. It is a leading information and communication technology (ICT) site based at the Swiss Digital Center, a business park set up in 1989 by a group of entrepreneurs from Sierre. With a particular focus on the Internet of things, TechnoArk now brings together an IT incubator and 3 research organisations, as well as specialist business development facilities.

www.technoark.ch  info@technoark.ch

BioArk Visp (Viège)

A building with a surface area of more than 4,000m2: the BioArk Visp technology site hosts various players in the field of life sciences and biopharmaceuticals. It brings together under one roof key competencies, training, technologies, support for innovation and SMEs and start-ups in the sector.

On the ground floor, the technology platform, operated by swissfillon AG, responds to a gap in the Swiss life sciences value chain: Fill-and-Finish (packaging of medicines). Since the beginning of 2017, the packaged finished products leave the platform and arrive directly at the customers› premises. This has the merit of attracting customers from all over Europe and thus strengthens the attractiveness of the Valais.

www.bioarkvisp.ch  info@bioarkvisp.ch

Contact

The Ark Foundation
Route du Rawyl 47
1950 Sion

+41 27 606 88 60
info@theark.ch