Swiss SME developing rapid microbiological cell-counting technology for food safety and contamination detection in production environments.
RQMICRO AG is a Swiss technology SME that developed CellCount, a rapid microbiological contamination testing platform. Their core work addresses a critical bottleneck in food production, water treatment, and industrial processes: conventional microbial testing takes 24–72 hours, while their platform aims to deliver results in near-real time. Based in Schlieren (Zurich's life sciences corridor), they brought CellCount from a feasibility concept through full commercial development using the EU's SME Instrument — a highly competitive grant designed exclusively for high-potential scale-ups. Their value proposition is speed and actionability: catch contamination before product leaves the facility, not after.
Both CellCount projects (SME-1 feasibility 2017 and SME-2 full development 2018–2021) are explicitly focused on solving microbiological contamination problems with a novel testing platform.
Both projects are filed under the H2020 Food pillar (P3-FOOD), indicating the primary application domain is food safety and quality control in production environments.
The product name CellCount and the company name rqmicro (rapid quantitative microbiology) both point to flow-cytometry-style rapid cell enumeration as the underlying technology.
RQMICRO successfully completed the full SME Instrument Phase 1 → Phase 2 progression, demonstrating capability in turning research into a commercially validated product under EU scrutiny.
RQMICRO's H2020 history is a single, focused development arc rather than a shift in direction: they entered the programme in 2017 with a Phase 1 feasibility study for CellCount (€50k), validated the concept, and immediately progressed to a full Phase 2 development grant (€2.2M, 2018–2021). There is no evidence of a pivot or broadening of scope — every euro was spent on the same product. This consistency is a strength signal, not a limitation: it suggests a team that knew what they were building and executed methodically rather than chasing multiple ideas.
RQMICRO is a commercialisation-stage company — their H2020 work concluded in 2021 and they are most likely now in market deployment, meaning future collaboration opportunities would be in pilot testing, validation partnerships, or integration into industrial quality-control systems rather than basic research.
RQMICRO operated exclusively as coordinator on both projects, with zero recorded consortium partners — consistent with the SME Instrument scheme, which is designed for single-company applications and does not require consortium building. This means there is no H2020 partnership history to evaluate. Anyone looking to collaborate with them would be starting from scratch in terms of relationship, with no existing EU-project network to leverage.
RQMICRO has no recorded consortium partners from their H2020 projects, which is structurally expected given the solo-applicant nature of the SME Instrument. Their geographic footprint within EU collaborative research is essentially zero — they are a Swiss-based company that accessed EU funding as a solo actor, not as part of a research network.
RQMICRO is one of the few SMEs globally building dedicated rapid quantitative microbiology platforms, targeting the gap between slow culture-based methods and expensive lab-grade flow cytometers. Their position in Schlieren — adjacent to ETH Zurich and a dense cluster of life science companies — gives them access to talent and pilot customers that few equivalent-stage startups outside Switzerland can match. For a consortium builder, they bring commercial-stage technology validated by two rounds of competitive EU peer review, not just academic prototypes.
