Good practice:

Agrifood Partnership of Western Macedonia

Western Macedonia is a region located in northern Greece that produces a wide variety of high quality agrifood products, which nevertheless haven’t acquired a solid presence within the national and global food market as they deserve. Therefore, the creation of Agrifood Partnership of Western Macedonia (APWM) a civic non-profit-making organization, was intended to upgrade region’s “basket of goods”.
Objectives of APWM:
 Support, promotion and recognition of agrifood products produced in Western Macedonia.
 Continuous raising and certification of the quality of the local food products.
 Food production, supply and demand increase.
 Collaboration with research and academic community.
 Public and private institutions active in the agrifood sector linking.
 Provision of promotional tool and know-how available to help local producers to become more extroversive.
- Creation of synergies (clusters) amongst the agrifood, tourism, and catering sectors.
- Employment growth in food sector.
- Local agricultural culture preservation.
APWM can manage a variety of projects, such as information and promoting measures, professional training and consulting seminars, market research, participation in exhibitions and more.
The organization's main beneficiaries are the region's agrifood producers, processors and other businesses operating in the sector of the food industry as well. Stakeholders are chambers of commerce, agricultural cooperatives, universities, federations.

APWM is financed by the Region of Western Macedonia and the region’s private food enterprises members of APWM, public and private institutes, sponsorships, and donations.
APWM members comprise municipalities, chambers of commerce, agricultural cooperatives, federations and private enterprises.

This is the first time that such an initiative has been undertaken in the Region of Western Macedonia in order to promote globally the local agrifood products. In this partnership are involved more than 28 food enterprises or producers of the region, sharing a common purpose: enhancing their worldwide presence in food markets. Moreover, there is notable activity in exports’ sector (Common Organisation of Agricultural Markets).

It is the first time that a critical number of agrifood stakeholders have been gathered together in order to create a coherent body that will promote local agrifood’s objectives, therefore there were some difficulties in organisation and cooperation subjects, in view of the recent financial crisis.

This regional level good practice, meaning the association between a public regional operator and the private food and beverages enterprises, could be a good example for many other regions to learn from. The important thing in this procedure so far is the existence of a cooperative attitude from both sides in order to achieve a common aim; enhancing the local food products to act in common tasks mostly abroad. It is true that food and beverages is one of the most dynamic sectors in industry worldwide. Moreover in recent years, consumers’ interest has focused not only on the quality, but on the origination of food products too. Therefore, this kind of enhanced cooperation moves, are an important factor helping the brand recognition of local products.
In Greece, there are other two successful examples of regional agrifood partnerships (located in the island of Crete and in Central Greece), working on the same plan, focusing on the enhancement of the extroversion of local food products.