A new project, MPowerBio, kicked-off May 1 and will both benefit European clusters and their SME members. MPowerBIO is aimed at setting up and implementing a capacity building programme for SME clusters along with an integrated business support programme for their SMEs, empowering clusters to raise awareness and improve the investment readiness and pitching skills of their SMEs as well as building links with investors and directly connecting investment ready SMEs identified and supported at regional competitions with expert coaches, investors and business partners at a final event, where the regionally selected projects will pitch their investment and partnering opportunities in front of investors and potential partners. To this end, MPowerBIO will pursue the following SMART objectives:

• Co-design a capacity building programme and a business support programme
• Empowering 90 clusters to provide business support to 250 SMEs
• Online tools to support assessment of investment readiness
• E-learning tool for capacity building and training
• Regional competitions to build pitching skills
• Pan-European final events
• 72 SMEs develop relations with investors and potential partners

With the current Covid-19 situation the objectives of the project has become even more relevant and important with many SME struggling for capital and to grow in the months to come, so by developing their competences it will contribute to overcome the "Valley of Death".

This project has received funding under the Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Grant Agreement No. 887501. The project runs for 30 months and together with 9 strong European partners, Agro Business Park A/S, Denmark, as the lead partner, will implemented the project. For further information or to learn how your cluster could participate in the train-the-training programmes, please do not hesitate to contact Susanne Baden Jørgensen at Agro Business Park A/S, Denmark.