Good practice:

Food Forum and Food Team: Regional Food Innovation Cluster Networks in South Ostrobothnia

Food Forum and Food Team are food sector collaboration networks that operate in South Ostrobothnia. The aim of the networks is to enhance the innovativeness and information sharing within the region’s food sector and they both are outputs from a former development project funded by the ERDF. The networks form a regional food cluster and carry out activities developed in the previous project.

Food Forum is a collaboration among five key actors who work within the food sector development in the region. The aim of the collaboration is to enhance the innovativeness of the agri-food sector through various activities. The collaboration is based on a signed contract. The forum meets three to four times a year and the chairmanship rotate every year. The main activities are: 1. Organisation of Food Business Summit, FBS (a yearly national event), 2. Organisation of Food Business Challenge (an innovation competition for students), 3. Organisation of smaller events related to new knowledge and innovations in the agri-food sector.

Food Team is a looser network that has been directed especially for food sector companies and their development. The team brings together companies within the food sector and enhances their exporting possibilities. Five to ten companies have actively taken part in the network. The team has also organised an export trip to China. Secondly the network aims to enhance the conspicuousness of the region as Food Province and its know-how in the food sector.

Running the networks requires relatively a low amount of resources and most activities are funded from actors’ own resources. The most resources are needed for the organisation of The Food Business Summit (from 3500 to 8000 EUR) and the Food Business Challenge competition (around 5 000 EUR /year).

The practice is an example of how activities developed in a former project have been implemented in the region and continue to function as part of organizations’ own activities. The Food Business Summit and Food Business Challenge especially, have enhanced the regions visibility nationwide. FBS has succeeded in bringing actors together and many good collaborations have started there. Food Team’s export trip to China was also a success, where smaller SMEs also got a change to participate.

When activities are run by own funds, the limited resources are always a challenge that needs to be overcome. Within the Food Team there has been challenges to find suitable topics for both large and small companies. Lately, the COVID-19 has challenged the organisation of many activities.

Especially for small regions with limited resources, this practice offers a potential model to be implemented and a starting point for networking and cluster-building within the food sector. Cooperation of key actors is crucial for the success and innovativeness of the region. The two networks aim help finding common goals and strengthening collaboration in the region.
The organisation of the Food Business Summit and the Food Business Challenge Innovation Competition are also interesting concepts that could be transferred to other partner regions.