On November 20th a China delegation visited FoodvalleyNL to explore new opportunities for collaboration. The delegation consisted of the plant cultivation and breeding company Shouguang as well as the Food Valley China cluster. In an interactive meeting the actictivies and interests of all parties involved were highlighted. The Food Valley of China is a strategic platform built by Weifang City for food industry transformation and upgrading and a national food safety zone, covering the whole district of Weifang, based in the Shandong province. The Food Valley of China is highly interested in further extending its international network, e.g. via a strategic partnership with FoodvalleyNL. FoodvalleyNL accelerates innovation by connecting companies to knowledge and educational institutes and government. FoodvalleyNL works on speeding up the innovation performance fo companies both from the Netherlands as well as abroad. The contacts in this delegation are of assistance in the activities of the New Frontiers in Food Fast Forward (NF4) project that supports the internationalization of SMEs. China is one of the defined target countries. An innovation tour towards China by the NF4-project is scheduled to take place from May 12th-19th 2019, including the visit of SIAL China in Shanghai, which is open for participation by SMEs from Europe in the participation clusters. More information on the tour: https://newfrontiersinfood.eu/event/innovation-tour-to-china-during-sial-shanghai/

The NF4 project is an internationalization fast track accelerator for innovation-intensive food SMEs, powered by a 5-partner food clusters alliance: Clusaga (ES); Food Valley (NL); Valorial (FR); Vitagora (FR) and Wagralim (BE). The activities are  specialized on 3 food industry value chains: processed foods, health&nutritional food products and connected food. These value chains provide a full package of acceleration services, aiming at boosting international collaboration and business development of a cohort of European food SMEs. Within the project 4 overseas target markets are selected in which the consortium is already strongly connected: Canada, USA, China and Brazil.