FINE

FINE is a consortium of strong and up-and-coming food regions: East Netherlands (project leader), East and West Flanders (Belgium), Øresund (Denmark-Sweden), Rogaland (Norway), Scotland (United Kingdom), Castilla y Leon (Spain), Emilia-Romagna (Italy) and Wielkopolska (Poland). FINE also cooperates with North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) and Rhône-Alpes (France).

FINE has two objectives: 

• Jointly devising regional policy for the expansion of business investment in innovation, research and technological development, by building strong European food clusters. 
• Devising regional and cross-regional cooperative projects for research and technological development.

So far, 14 cooperative projects have been launched under the FINE umbrella. These evolved from 47 project ideas, to which over 100 European companies and research institutes responded.

The European Union supported the establishment of this network under the ‘Regions of Knowledge’ program. The European Commission cited FINE as an example for other networks in its August 2007 document entitled ‘Communication from the Commission, Competitive European regions through research and innovation’ and in the CREST working group’s report entitled 'Guidelines on Coordinating the Research FP and the SF to support R&D, April 2007'. FINE has been asked to act as  the seed network and model for a European initiative to create a larger European network of 26 food regions.

For more information on FINE, call Linze Rijswijk at +31 (0)6 4639 0076 or send an e-mail to linze.rijswijk@foodvalley.nl.