EIC Accelerator Report Card: Votechnik's LCD Recycling Robot

Every flat screen made before LEDs took over hides thin fluorescent tubes filled with mercury behind its panel, and EU law says they must come out before the rest is shredded. In most recycling plants that is still done by hand, at about five screens an hour per worker. Votechnik, the trading name of ALR Innovations Limited in Limerick, built a robot cell that does it automatically. In 2019 the European Commission's list of EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 winners for the 3 April 2019 cut-off named Votechnik, of Limerick, for ALR4000, "Automated LCD Recycling series 4000". It is the only company listed for the project.

The grant, an EU contribution of €1,941,519 towards a total cost of €2,773,599, paid for a project that ran from 1 October 2019 to 31 March 2023, according to CORDIS. The goal was a market-ready machine, three reference sites in northern Europe, southern Europe and the USA, and "10 sales of the technology from the demonstrations before the end of the project". The machine exists and works at one site in Ireland. The rest of that plan cannot be found in the public record.

Still Trading, With a New EU Grant

ALR Innovations is a live company. The Companies Registration Office lists it with status "Normal", its last annual return dated 11 September 2025 and its latest accounts made up to 31 December 2024, filed on 1 October 2025, according to the CRO open data register and SoloCheck. Both SoloCheck and Business Barometer record four shareholders and the trading name Votechnik. They disagree on size: SoloCheck calls it a small company, Business Barometer a micro company. Neither shows revenue, profit or staff numbers free of charge, so the company's finances could not be checked for this article.

The clearest sign of current activity is EU money. In May 2026 the Commission signed ORBIT, a Horizon Europe project coordinated in Greece on product environmental footprint tools for circular design, which runs from 1 September 2026 to 28 February 2030. ALR Innovations is a partner with a net EU contribution of €100,625, according to CORDIS. In February 2026 Ireland's Whole of Government Circular Economy Strategy 2026 to 2028 carried a Votechnik case study in its electronics chapter, taken from the national Circuleire platform, which published it on 9 October 2025.

How the Robot Takes a Screen Apart

An LCD television or monitor from the cold cathode era is backlit by fluorescent tubes (CCFLs) that contain mercury, and its panel holds liquid crystals. The project report on CORDIS notes that the WEEE directive makes removal of both mandatory before the rest of the device is shredded for metals and plastics. The alternatives the company named in its application were slow hand disassembly, specialised mercury shredders that only pay off at about a tonne an hour, and semi-automated lines that still need workers to pull out the tubes.

The ALR4000 is a sealed plant about 12 metres wide and 5 metres tall, according to WEEE Ireland. Inside, industrial vision and a KUKA KR QUANTEC robot open screens from 12 to 90 inches, remove the panel and the mercury tubes, and pass the air through carbon filters. A KUKA news item filed under November 2021 says the development took ten years and four technology rounds, and that the hard part was the endless variety of screen designs and fixings: screws, glue, tape and cable ties. A KUKA case study on Zenoot quotes O'Donoghue on the design goal.

The throughput figures come from the company. CORDIS gives 60 screens an hour, while the Circuleire case study and the national strategy give 60 to 80 an hour; in 2017 the company told Resource Recycling that its earlier Trumaster-ALR machine handled up to 80 an hour. For the manual baseline CORDIS says five screens an hour and the KUKA case study three to five. No independent test of the machine's output has been published.

What ALR4000 Promised, and What the Record Shows

The project had two stated aims: build and commission the ALR4000 at full scale, and replicate it at demonstration sites. The final periodic report, covering May 2021 to March 2023, says design, build, systems testing and CE marking were completed, "achieving TRL 8". It says the machine is in place at KMK Metals Recycling, which it describes as processing 80% of Ireland's waste LCDs, that an EN 50625 environmental assessment was passed, and that the site gained WEEELABEX certification on the strength of it. WEEE Ireland confirms the machine at KMK's Kilbeggan plant and says KMK puts more than 32 tonnes of flat panel displays a week through it.

On the other half of the plan the report is vaguer. It says "replica machines completed and design for manufacturing review undertaken". The results page lists a deliverable called "replica systems for EU and USA completed". Neither names a site or a buyer. A month after the project closed, the Limerick Post reported that Votechnik was still planning to export the ALR4000 to Sweden and the United States. No installation in either country has been announced since, and none of the 10 sales the project targeted is public apart from KMK, which the KUKA case study calls the first customer.

1. Full-scale TRL 8 machineDeliveredBuilt, tested and CE marked, per CORDIS.
2. Irish reference siteDeliveredRunning at KMK, Kilbeggan, per WEEE Ireland.
3. Reference sites in a second EU market and the USANot achievedReplicas reported built; no site announced.
4. 10 machine sales by March 2023Not achievedOnly KMK is public.
5. Market promotionDeliveredKeynote in Salzburg, IFR and KUKA case studies.

The project ran for 42 months, from a signature on 18 September 2019 to March 2023. The grant itself did its core job: it took a machine the company had been building since 2009 to a certified industrial installation. Whether the sales target was ever realistic for a company of this size is a fair question; the record simply shows it was not met in public view.

Recognition, and a Patent Fight

The CORDIS report lists the recognition the machine drew: a 2022 Circular Societies Prize selection by EIT RawMaterials, a case study in the International Federation of Robotics' 2022 World Robotics report, a keynote at the International Electronics Recycling Congress in January 2023 and a place for O'Donoghue on Recycling International's Top 100 list. The prize could not be confirmed on EIT RawMaterials' own pages; the Top 100 listing is also mentioned by Recycling International, which in September 2022 reported Votechnik offering demonstration days in Ireland and attending the E-Scrap conference in New Orleans.

The commercial picture is complicated by a rival with shared roots. In January 2023 Peregrine Technologies (Holdings) Ltd, whose FPD Recycling division sells a competing robot called FPD Pro, asked the High Court to revoke a University of Limerick patent on removing hazardous substances from LCD screens, granted in 2016, Breaking News reported. ALR Innovations holds an exclusive licence to that patent and had written to Peregrine alleging infringement. Resource Recycling, in an article of 22 February 2023, reported that FPD Recycling's chief executive, Paudy O'Brien, was formerly executive director of Votechnik, that FPD Pro was already installed at the US processor eLoop, and that FPD Recycling had won €17.7 million in EU innovation funding in 2022. The outcome of the court case could not be found.

Votechnik now presents the ALR4000 as the base for wider materials recovery. The national strategy's case study says an IND2000 unit recovers indium from glass panels and that an emerging SUP2000 would extend the automation to solar panels and battery black mass. No product page, customer or test result for either could be found, so both remain claims.

Why Europe Should Care

The CORDIS report calls LCDs one of the fastest growing waste streams on the planet, and the Circuleire case study cites the European Environment Agency's figure that only about 44% of electronics placed on the EU market are collected for recycling. Mercury removal is a legal duty under the WEEE Directive, so a cheap, safe way to do it serves a rule that already exists rather than a market that has to be invented. CORDIS puts one ALR4000's capacity at about 125,000 screens a year on one shift, roughly 0.5% of the EU's annual LCD waste. On those figures, handling all of it would take about 200 machines; one is on record.

The materials pitch is narrower than it sounds. Votechnik stresses indium, the metal recovered from LCD glass, but indium is not among the 34 materials on the EU's 2023 list of critical raw materials. Copper, which the Circuleire case study lists among the valuable metals left unrecovered in e-waste, is on it. The project's strongest link to EU policy is therefore pollution control and worker safety under the WEEE rules, not raw material supply.

The Verdict

Votechnik has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.