Representatives and politicians of the FoodChains 4 EU project met for the 6th Monitoring Board Meeting, in Manchester, on Thursday, 24th of October 2019, marking the end of the phase one of the project and highlighting the fruitful work over the past 3 years, carried out by the project partners, in the 5 regions of the project: Flevoland (NL), Plovdiv/Sofia (BG), Emilia-Romagna (IT), Maramures (RO) and Greater Manchester (UK).
In the opening, Jan-Nico Appelman, Province of Flevoland, reflected briefly on the Conference ”Feeding Regions: Turning Plans into Actions” held the day before, emphasizing that was an inspiring conference with interesting speakers, which set the right tone with the topic Turning Plans into Actions.
Regional action plans: During the Monitoring Board Meeting, each partner presented the regional actions plans that should be developed by the end of phase one (31 December 2019) and implemented during the phase 2 of the FC4EU project, within the period 2020-2021.
1. Bulgaria started the presentations of the regional action plans explaining their two envisioned actions:
- Creating an infrastructure for delivery of services for improved R&D and innovation implementation in food chain companies;
- Developing an university-business open collaboration platform for food quality, safety and R&D commercialization.
2. Maramures shared also their action plan, focused on the ”Good of Maramures” initiative:
- Development of the ‘Good of Maramures’ Association that will manage the trademark ‘Good of Maramures’;
- The food chain innovation and technological dissemination in Maramures County.
3. Emilia-Romagna gave insights in their action plan, focused on:
- Improving the monitoring and follow up of project results in the packaging sector;
- Creating a sustainable food packaging platform.
4. Greater Manchester followed in sharing their action plan that includes 3 different actions:
- Creating strategic leadership in the region;
- Strengthening the business support about sustainability issued in the food and drink sector;
- Establishing a food innovation and enterprise funds in Oldham that’s support the Northern Roots project.
5. Flevoland presented their action plan for the coming two years:
- Supporting regional food SME`s whereby a tool-kit will be developed and the existing short food chain network will be strengthened and structured;
- Regional supplying of Flevoland food products in three different settings (music festival Lowlands, Floriade Expo 2022 and the metropolitan region of Amsterdam).
Discussing the progress of the project: The participants at the MB meeting also discussed about the midterm review and financial aspects of the FoodChains 4 Europe project.
Project activities envisaged for the phase 2: The last point on the agenda of the 6th Monitoring Board Meeting concerned the project activities planed for the next 2 years, that will be focused on monitoring the regional implementation of the action plans.
