12 international Food Industry clusters and centres of scientific excellence in Paris

June 2nd, 2010 - F²C Innovation, le French food industry created by three French clusters (Agrimip Innovation, Valorial and Vitagora) has taken the initiative of inviting 12 international clusters and centres of scientific excellence to Paris on June 3rd, 2010.

Belgian, British, Canadian, Danish, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian and Swedish - in total 9 nationalities will be represented for a day of discussions and exchanges. The objective: to present the cutting edge scientific capabilities within each of these organisations and carry out 9 workshops on a number of topics (2) in order to define priority areas for setting up joint R&D projects.

Cluster organisations place great importance on international relations. It is both the opportunity to promote the capabilities within their network and their territories and to identify and cooperate with scientific and technological excellence from other parts of the world. The three French food industry clusters within the structure F²C Innovation have thus joined forces in order to pool resources and benefit from a greater visibility on an international scale. It was then necessary to prioritise areas of development, with 9 scientific themes being identified. "The next step was to identify the world class centres of scientific excellence that corresponded to these themes," explains Patrice Roché, Director of Agrimip Innovation.

The result was the identification of 18 cluster and research organisations with which F²C made contact. "12 of these organisations responded positively to our invitation for an international Food Industry cluster meeting on June 3rd in Paris," confirms Patrice Roché. This is indeed the first time that 15 food industry cluster organisations have taken part in a day of exchanges in which researchers from each cluster present their activities and specific capabilities and strengths during the 9 workshops coordinated by F²C Innovation. "Our objective is to discuss and share our common preoccupations in order to extract key questions that can soon lead to the launch of joint projects," declare the coordinators of F²C Innovation.

Contact
Marthe Jewell , Communications manager Vitagora
Tel. 03 80 78 97 92 Fax.: 03 80 78 97 95, Mobile: 06 60 65 87 16
Email : marthe.jewell@vitagora.com