International Consortium of Clusters has been granted 5 million euro from the EU to support innovations in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)
The Consortium comprising nine of Europe’s leading clusters and three inter-cluster and innovation management experts has been awarded a grant of 5 million euro from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme for the implementation of the EU project “GreenOffshoreTech”. The project was selected as the second-best proposal of a highly competitive call with 132 applications.
The Consortium comprises partners from 15 regions and 7 countries across Europe (Norway, Portugal, Latvia, Poland, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Germany) and the common goal to support innovation in SMEs, cross-sectoral and trans-national collaboration, and regional business development.
The purpose of the EU project “GreenOffshoreTech” is to set-up a framework for cross-sectoral and trans-national collaboration between SMEs, clusters, and regions for the development of innovative products, processes or services for Green Offshore Production and Transport towards a resource-efficient Blue Economy, adopting EU’s Green Deal while facing reindustrialization and digitalisation.
The vision of the GreenOffshoreTech project is “Making Offshore Production and Transport green, cleaner and modern”.
Therefore, 3 out of the 5 million euros EU funding are dedicated to finance innovative ideas from SMEs.
The GreenOffshoreTech Consortium will facilitate a Call of Proposals where SMEs can apply for and will undertake two types of activities to support SMEs directly:
- Support SMEs directly by funding 100 SME-driven Innovation projects; and
- Providing a range of dedicated and tailored Business Support Services to the winner SMEs to enable access to markets and further external resources and financing.
The GreenOffshoreTech Consortium will offer an open space for collaboration to connect and facilitate cooperation between SMEs from different sectors, regions and countries in order to foster the deployment of key enabling technologies such as advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and environmental technologies in the emerging sectors offshore wind energy and offshore aquaculture, and the established sectors offshore oil & gas and waterborne transport during and after the project.
GreenOffshoreTech consortium members are following clusters and regional development agencies:
- Mosseregionens Naeringsutvikling AS (MNU), facilitator of the “VIKEN Technology Cluster 4.0” (Norway) – GreenOffshoreTech Coordinator;
- FORUM OCEANO – Association of Maritime Economy (Portugal);
- Maritimes Cluster Norddeutschland e.V. (MCN, Germany);
- Iceland Ocean Cluster (IOC, Iceland);
- Highlands & Islands Enterprise (HIE, UK);
- CLEANTECH LATVIA (Latvia);
- Centrum Kooperacji Recyklingu (CKR) facilitator of the elite National Key Cluster “Waste Management and Recycling Cluster” (WMRC, Poland);
- Composites United e.V. (CU), facilitator of the “Leading-Edge Cluster MAI Carbon” (Germany),
- Cluster Mechatronik & Automation Management GGmbH (CMAB, Germany);
and following inter-cluster and innovation management experts:
10. Scaberia AS (Norway);
11. Balance Technology Consulting GmbH Germany);
12. Mineral and Energy Economy Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (MEERI, Poland).
VIKEN Technology Cluster 4.0 is the GreenOffshoreTech contact point for MNU.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101005541.