Agri Sud-Ouest Innovation (ASOI) has signed a collaboration agreement with the Spanish cluster CTA (Corporación Tecnológica de Andalucía) to establish ties and a framework for cooperation between the two entities in innovation in the agri-food sector.
An ASOI delegation composed by Philipe Saux (Chairman), Laurent Augier (General Manager) and Nicolas Nguyen The (Head of European affairs), visited CTA’ s facilities and met with Elías Atienza (General Manager), David Páez (Director of Consultancy and International Projects) and Nathalie Chavrier (technical manager of the Agri-Food sector). The ASOI expedition, visited Andalusia to meet agents of the regional innovation ecosystem such as CTA, Invest in Andalusia (TRADE) and two projects of the company GMV that apply new technologies to the agri-food sector.
ASOI is a European innovation cluster, aiming to foster, promote and support real world innovations for the agrifood sector. ASOI leads a multi-stakeholder community of more than 400 organizations and 5000 people, from both scientific and economic fields. ASOI plays a leading role as partner in the European projects, as well as in regional, national and European initiatives. It is currently involved in European projects from the COSME programme, the I3 instrument dedicated to interregional innovation investments, Interreg SUDOE or POCTEFA, and HORIZON EUROPE.
CTA is a regional public-private partnership (PPP) that was created in 2005 as joint effort of Andalusia regional government and a group of key companies to trigger innovation activities performed by the Andalusian private sector and to connect these activities with academia and society, supporting public bodies innovation policy implementation and promoting world-class R&I in a transition region. Currently, CTA is owned by more than 180 companies, more than 40% of them SMEs, in 7 main European industrial priority sectors: ICT, Aerospace and productive processes, Agrifood, Biotechnology, Building and civil engineering, Energy and Environment, and Leisure and Tourism.
ASOI and CTA have been working together since 2018 through various European projects (DIVA, DIVAx and more recently BioInSouth) and are willing to pursue jointly collaborative activities for the agrifood sector:
- Exchanges on cluster thematics such as strategy, positioning at national and EU level, business models, etc.
- The active searching and identification of suitable funds and funding opportunities in order to promote further commitment and project participation;
- Facilitating connection and cooperation between Parties’ mutual members for cross-border innovation activities;
- Organizing strategic think tank and topical meetings to identify disruptive technologies taking advantage of the combination of the Parties’ mutual know- how, skills and facilities;
- Exploring opportunities for joint technology and innovation based support services to third parties at national or international level;
- Mutual collaboration in activities taking place in the framework of ongoing European projects (dissemination of project activities, participation in workshops, business and technological mentoring, etc.);
