INNOGROW 3rd partners' meeting
Stara Zagora Regional Economic Development Agency organized INNOGROW partnership meeting from the 6th to 8th of June 2017 in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria.
Increasing the competitiveness of SMEs in the rural area by transnational learning activities and introduction of best practices on innovative technologies, business models and financing opportunities is the goal of the project partners and cooperating stakeholders in the project.
Stara Zagora is nationally important economic center with important transport geographical position. The region has a tradition of coal mining and is rich in thermal mineral springs with a large number of spas and health centers to facilitate the use of the healing waters. Forests are most valuable natural resource and rich soil is ideal for productive agriculture and food processing.
Rose valley is an area that beholds 52 ha of beautifully smelling rose fields and lavender, organically grown so their blossoms used for the oil extraction and production of certified organic cosmetic reach the highest quality. The blossoms are handpicked and processed in the facility just few steps from the fields. A visionary owner gathered a small group of Bulgarian experts in biochemistry, economics, marketing, building a young company with innovative business model.
This good practice of tradition, technology and business model is a result of a fruitful cooperation with Stara Zagora Economic Development Agency helping them by structuring a financially sustainable financing scheme for their start-up phase and growth, combining EU non-refundable financial support and bank loans.
The participants of the meeting have on similar examples discussed the existing measures for promoting innovation in rural economy SMEs, gave examples and discussed about enabling environment for new products development, overviewed innovative production technologies and introduced recommendation for improvements for all of the above topics. Within the interactive sessions partners tackled challenges, barriers and drivers faced when adopting innovation and stimulating new products development.
This partners meeting also had a purpose to go through administrative requirements of the project, like reporting, novelties and to brief the partners on the common progress of the project implementation by the contribution of each partner.
