The official ECCP profile of the ELCA project has officially started!

Submitted by Agnieszka Dąbrowska on 24 March 2021

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The project entitled “European Lightweight Cluster Alliance” has received funding under the COSME Cluster Go International programme! The aim of our project is to prepare an international marketing strategy by a consortium created by five European industry clusters, establish cooperation between member companies of all clusters, prepare a joint offer and establish contacts with automotive, aero&aeronautics, railway and maritime concerns and also to promote European solutions in the field of light structures in transport, which aims at the reduction of CO2 emission and increase recycling, and thus fits into the concept of the circular economy.

The result of the project will be a common brand “Lightweight made in Europe” created by the consortium and its promotion by opening to the markets of the USA, Japan, as well as India and Latin America, signing cooperation agreements and development of R&D cooperation.  To achieve these goals, will be organized 22 economic missions to these regions and 18 national and regional events related to the subject of the project. The project implementation started on 1st September 2020 and will last 24 months.

We would like to invite you to go to the ELCA’s official website: https://elcainternationalization.eu  and its official LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elca-internationalization . There you will find all news and information about the project, partners and ELCA Network.

Currently partners are working on the analysis of market opportunities, especially in the USA, Japan, India, Mexico, Chile and Colombia. For this purpose, the partners are complementing their analysis by consulting specialised documents (e.g. specialised market and foresight studies). BIC is focusing on aero, AMZ in auto, MAV in rail and MECH in maritime. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic all consortium meetings have to be organized on-line via MS Teams.

What is more, on March 17, 2021 took place an interregional workshop organized by PLA – WP1 leader. This interregional workshop was organised to discuss the opportunities per sector and to compose a complete partnership (matrix of competences: value chain stages vs. sectors) and its aligning with the opportunities identified in T1.1. Partners were working on identification of needs and expectations in each targeted country. It was doing by consulting collected specialised documents (specialised market and foresight studies, etc.). It is important because the aim of the project is: identifying specific regions in the already targeted markets and identifying other countries in which lightweight will be relevant in next years. The identification of market opportunities is especially significant for those regions in which more stringent environmental regulations are likely to enter in force.

After the workshop, partners will continue working on documents: BIC will focus on aero, AMZ in auto, MAV in rail and MECH in maritime, PLA will focus on identifying opportunities for polymer-based raw materials across all sectors. Each partner will also use their existing contacts in the targeted countries to identify the market opportunities, but also within their regional stakeholders’ network to have knowledge exchange on the mature and less mature markets. These all activities are necessary for design the strategy plan for building a common brand “Lightweight made in Europe” by considering the competences of the partnership and the target audience, which will be created in the comming weeks.

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