The company, Eirzyme, has developed low-cost enzymes that help convert biomass materials such as brewers' grains and waste wood into bioethanol. The company, which is based at the Enterprise Ireland-backed business incubator facility at NUI Galway, has just netted 10m in funding from Canadian wood processing firm Micromills, which it will use to bring its new technology to market.

Developing such enzymes is crucial to the development of the biofuel industry. While bioethanol can easily be produced from food crops such as grain, using food resources on a large scale could put food supplies in some producer countries under pressure.

Rising corn prices due to bioethanol production have already triggered protests in Mexico, where corn-based tortillas are a staple of the Mexican diet.

Bioethanol production from agricultural by-products is potentially a far more efficient use of resources, but has been hampered by technical difficulties.

One way of producing bioethanol in this fashion is through the use of proteins known as enzymes which trigger a chemical reaction. However, enzymes have traditionally been costly to produce and cannot be reused.

Eirzyme said that it had already attracted considerable industrial interest in the technology, which was developed by a research team led by Dr Maria Tuohy.

The company's ultimate goal is to set up a large scale enzyme production facility which will manufacture specific enzyme cocktails to work on a range of raw materials.