The New Frontiers in Food Fast Forward consortium (NF4) was in Geneva during the Vitafoods Europe fair. Since healthy & nutritional food is one target of the consortium, the team chose Vitafoods as an assembly point where we met partners, international guests and companies.

On the May 7^th, the consortium met the St Hyacinthe Tech Pole from Canada, and discussed about further collaboration. They will meet the consortium again in Belgium in September.

On the May 8^th, the consortium welcomed Shelly King and Sue Coueslan, the president and vice-president of Natural Products Canada (NPC) , for whom, the consortium organized 10 meetings with companies. Canada is an interesting market for a lot of companies, especially with CETA, the number of companies which want to develop partnership with Canadian actors is increasing. Thus, NPC is a good contact for our European SMEs which need guidance and advices for this specific market. At the end of 8^th, the consortium organized a drink and invited companies and international partners to join and interact.

On the May 9^th, the consortium held a High-Level Advisory Board meeting (HLAB) with three companies, one public institutions and NPC in order to have their advice on how NF4 can go further on the European actions in accordance with the expectation of SMEs. During the meeting Shelly and Sue also share their experience, feedback and knowledge on their ecosystems. Since 2016, NF4 and NPC have been collaborating, resulting in key achievements for European SMEs. A key action was the partnership mission to Canada, in October 2018 during the Benefiq event, where NF4 and NPC collaborated to set up a tailored program for companies who joined the mission (including collective visits, business matchmaking, workshops etc.).

This collaboration between NF4 and NPC was formalised as a Memorandum of Understanding on May 9th, to develop a long-term partnership strategy and create deeper relationships between European and Canadian SMEs.

The NF4 project is an internationalisation fast track accelerator for innovation-intensive food SMEs, powered by a 5-way alliance of food clusters: Clusaga (ES); Food Valley (NL); Valorial (FR); Vitagora (FR) and Wagralim (BE). The project is an extension of the successfully defined roadmap of the New Frontiers in Food initial partnership. The activities are focused on 3 food industry value chains: processed foods, health & nutritional food products and connected food.