Success stories

Between 4 March and 8 April 2021, the Excellence Partnerships SMARTENERGY and BLUES, together with the participants, Tenerrdis and Mazovia Cluster ICT (MCICIT) located in France and Poland organised a virtual ClusterXchange. The exchange was hosted by Tenerrdis and consisted of training for the visiting organisation as well as networking, and business improvement opportunities for both the...

The TCI Network is a 25-year-old non-profit organisation that works with 9,000 practitioners who work in cluster development in 110 countries. The TCI Network’s key goal is to continue to inspire cluster organisations in their development processes and support cluster policy learning. Discussing the ECCP, Merete Nielsen, President of the TCI Network, states that it is an extremely useful tool that...

SPK, the Slovak Plastic Cluster specialising in research, innovation, smart materials, and recycling for the plastic sector, hosted the EXTRATEX Partnership ClusterXchange which provided an opportunity for virtual visits to strategic Slovak companies in this sector between February and March 2021. The virtual visits were then followed by B2B and C2C meetings. Through this exchange, the...

In November 2020, the French competitiveness cluster France Water Team invited 2 other water clusters ZINNAE (Spain) & Water Alliance (Netherlands) to meet and work together on a new type of event that would foster collaboration opportunities for their members and beyond. With the support of the BLUES Partnership, the 3 water clusters met through a virtual eClusterXchange that was organised from...

Through the support of the CE4BIG Partnership, 4 clusters from France, Germany, Poland and Belgium and 5 SMEs took part in an online training session on how to pitch in the life sciences sector as a virtual ClusterXchange. Although the training could only take place virtually due to the COVID-19 crisis, it worked well due to the flexibility of breaking up the sessions over shorter periods which...

Mabbett is an environmental consultancy that identifies, designs and implements solutions for environmental, health and safety issues. Over the past months, they have collaborated with the ECCP on two circular economy cluster projects through the ECCP’s Towards Green Transition Facility. Geraldine Boylan, Director of Environment at Mabbett, and Alexandre Fintoni, Project Manager and Environmental...

The Wood Industry Cluster of Slovenia is a non-profit organisation founded in 1999 by Slovenian woodworking companies and institutions. It now comprises one-third of employees in the Slovenian wood sector and the country’s most important research institution. The cluster works on various projects to support the needs of their member companies. Erika Valentinčič explains that through the Towards...

INDESCAT (the Catalan sports cluster) is a cluster that brings together companies and organisations from the Catalan sport industry to develop actions to improve their competitiveness and environmental sustainability. Currently, INDESCAT represents more than 100 businesses and has a turnover of almost €2.4 million. INDESCAT was selected as one of 25 clusters to receive help from the ECCP’s Towards...

Primarily based in the Veneto Region in Italy, LUCE IN VENETO is a cluster that consists of over 50 SMEs in the smart lighting sector. It connects companies and their specific expertise to generate synergies and new business opportunities. Following its selection by the European Commission and the ECCP to receive support from the Towards Green Transition Facility, LUCE IN VENETO is focussing on...

Cluster IDiA - Asociación Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación en Aragón - is one of 25 clusters that was selected to receive training under the Towards Green Transition Facility. Discussing the facility, Project Manager Nina Hoppmann explains that the cluster has an ecosystem of 70,000 employees of which 16,000 are ICT professionals. The cluster is very active in Spain and Europe. To help their...