A 150-year-old Co Cork fabric firm has been named the overall winner of the 2003 All-Island Innovation Awards.

Punch Industries, which makes cleaning products at factories in Little Island and Kinsale, landed both the large business category award and the €15,000 top prize for its "Keep it White" concept which uses patented technology to help stop whites going grey in the washing machine.

Three Northern Ireland firms also received category awards at a gala ceremony in the Hilton Hotel, Belfast, last night.

It is the second year the Innovation Awards have been run on an all-island basis. Sponsored by The Irish Times and BT, they are co-organised by Forfás as part of its Discover Science and Engineering Programme, Invest NI and InterTradeIreland.

Praising the winning entry, Ms Mary Cryan, chairwoman of the eight-person judging panel, said it had been struck by the manner in which innovation had emerged from such a long-standing company. "Innovation is the passion that we need to bring back into business," she said. "It's absolutely essential, not just for technology industries but, for traditional ones if they are going to survive." The winner of the small business category was Derry technology firm Andronics for the development of a series of satellite monitoring systems.

Andor Technology, Belfast, won the medium business category for a newly developed sensitive imaging camera, while biotech firm Fusion Antibodies, based in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, took the new technology prize.

Each of the four category winners received €5,000.

Mr Michael Ahern, Minister of State for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, said at the event: "This competition underlines the fact that innovation - the exploitation of new ideas - is absolutely essential to safeguard and deliver high-quality jobs, successful business, and better products and services for everyone.

"Our future competitiveness and prosperity will depend on our ability to move further up the value chain, to bolster the innovative capacity of our economy."

Also speaking at the event was Mr Bruce Robinson, permanent secretary of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland, who said: "Future economic success will spring from an investment in innovation. Innovation is at the very core of what gives companies a competitive edge in the global marketplace."

Mr Michael Austen, deputy managing director of The Irish Times, congratulated the short-listed and winning companies for this year's event. "The example of these companies is that there is always something to learn and that innovation can help the most traditional of industries find new opportunities, building on the existing skills and the stability that experience always brings," he said.

The other shortlisted entries were: in the small business category, Axis Systems, Co Down and CEL Track, Galway; in medium business, IP Europe, Wexford and Sigma Wireless, Dublin; in large business, Bombardier Aerospace, Belfast and Galen, Co Antrim; and in new technology, Striptec of Derry, Lightwave Technologies, Dublin, and Realview Innovations, Co Roscommon.