EU Network / ENFFI

The European food and drinks industry is extremely diversified in terms of supply and access to raw materials, products and processes, and has clearly differentiated sub-sectors. There are significant differences between the North and South of Europe. In the northern member states there are well developed linkages between raw materials suppliers and processors.

There is also a high level of innovation that is clearly adding value to final products through improved packaging, quality, safety and functionality of ingredients, and optimisation of production processes.

In southern Europe the situation is rather different. The sector is fragmented and is dominated by SMEs.

The differences among EU food sector firms in their capability to innovate are quite wide when we compare the former EU15 with the new member states. This accentuates the 'equity gap' among SMEs in the food and drinks sector in Europe in terms of access to innovation financing.

The EU Finaning Network for the food sector, or the ENFFI project, will work to address this equity gap between venture capitalists and innovative food processing SMEs through developing and disseminating the use of standardised tools and methodological approaches/procedures.

The overarching goal of the ENFFI project is to:

Identify and analyse specific needs and problems related to innovation financing in the food processing sector, and to get a better understanding of the success factors in financing food sector innovation. Ultimately this knowledge will contribute to policy formulation based on lessons learnt and new recommendations.

The above goal can be seen in terms of 5 main objectives:

- To provide SMEs and investors active in the food sector with sector specific networking opportunities.
- To transfer "excellent" innovation management methodologies, tools and activities adapted to local environments through the creation and support of European networking.
- To contribute to the creation of a European Innovation area by fostering collaboration between the many different participants acting in the same sector and extracting lessons and best practices.
- To develop a number of food sector-specific guides and tools targeting innovative enterprises and to validate such guides and tools through specific roundtable discussions between representatives from the financing community and food sector firms.
- To disseminate lessons learned and to exploit synergies with services developed under the PAXIS and Gate2Growth initiatives, as well as to draw lessons to support the creation of new and efficient policy initiatives in the EU's Enterprise policy.