The competitiveness clusters Materalia (the association of players in the Materials and Processes sector in the French Grand Est region), MecaTech (specialising in mechanical engineering and engineering sciences in the Belgian region of Wallonia), Skywin (the Walloon aerospace cluster in Belgium) and the Luxembourg Materials & Manufacturing Cluster of Luxinnovation are joining forces to promote technological collaboration between their members.
The objective of this collaboration is multi-dimensional. In addition to the networking and matchmaking component, the aim is to stimulate the setting up of R&D projects involving large companies, SMEs and RTOs from the respective ecosystems of these clusters in the Greater Region and to establish links with relevant European and interregional funding opportunities (such as Era-Net, Horizon Europe, etc.).
“Our wish is to share as much information as possible on funding opportunities, members’ testimonials, good practices and project ideas”, explains Caroline Muller, the manager of the Luxembourg Materials & Manufacturing Cluster of Luxinnovation.
Last October, three jointly organised webinars provided an opportunity to review all the existing mechanisms and to highlight concrete examples in the fields of advanced and sustainable by design-materials, recycling and the circular economy, and, finally, digitalisation and humanrobot collaboration. About fifteen companies and technological research centres presented their past or current projects.
Webinars in March
A new series of webinars will be held in March. They will address the next calls for projects to be launched in the framework of the Horizon Europe programme, more specifically on the topics of materials, industry 4.0 and aviation.
They will also present the other EU funding programmes such as IraSME (International research activities by small and medium-sized enterprises, with a current call closing next March), Eurostars (which supports innovative SMEs involved in European collaborative projects and primarily targets companies with high R&D investments) or Eureka Clusters (with many calls underway).
“As a contact point for these European programmes, we support companies who are interested to apply for these calls for projects”, says Caroline Muller.