Value4Pack

Value4Pack is an Interregional Innovation Investment (I3) project, originating from the European S3 Partnership Food Packaging.

To achieve the current (and upcoming) European targets by 2030, industrial stakeholders, in particular SMEs, have a strong need for innovation and investment throughout the entire food packaging value chain, in which interregional cross-sector collaboration is essential.

Goal
Value4Pack aims to boost innovation and investment capacity in the European food packaging value chain by building an interregional resilient ecosystem between its relevant penta-helix actors (i.e. industrial stakeholders – research institutes – investors – regional authorities – consumers and NGOs).

Collaboration is key
By facilitating interregional cooperation, Value4Pack will increase the capacity for companies in the food packaging value chain, to engage in interregional innovation projects and initiatives, develop new business ideas, and make concrete interregional innovation investments for validated solutions that meet their needs.

Core activities
To reach this goal, the core-activities of Value4Pack are:

• Connect and align the actors along the European food packaging value chain, inducing a harmonized understanding and vision of food packaging. To create awareness among stakeholders about each other’s needs, and to translate their needs to challenges for their industry.
• Perform an interregional value chain analysis to identify the innovation gaps in the entire food packaging value chain and the food packaging innovators. Facilitating cross-fertilization of food packaging innovations, know-how and best practices between regions through matchmaking and networking events, to close the innovation gaps, in particular in less developed regions.
• Development of regional roadmaps indicating short, medium and long-term innovation/investment trajectories for the food packaging value chain.
• Support regional stakeholders, in particular SMEs, and facilitate the further elaboration of interregional investment projects via interregional (i) matchmaking and knowledge exchange, (ii) workshops and trainings for stakeholders, (iii) study visits to frontrunner companies, investment pilots, research and technology organizations (RTOs), etc.
• Development of a joint-action plan for interregional investments in the food packaging value chain, engaging stakeholders (in particular SMEs).

Moreover, through its bottom-up approach, Value4Pack will also support regional authorities in the entrepreneurial discovery process (EDP) for the S3 priorities linked to food packaging, to design evidence-based and targeted policy interventions in the long-term.