Three competitive clusters, Agrimip Innovation, Valorial and Vitagora rolled out a policy that led to the creation of the French Food Cluster, or F2C Innovation, in a move to pool their skills, expertise, resources and efforts to strengthen their international growth. On May 7 this year, they cleared the way for new outlets by signing a cooperation agreement protocol with PortugalFood, a backbone organization of the Portuguese stakeholders in agriculture and food processing. "The goal is to set up partnerships in public research and higher education, and develop industrial cooperation for innovation projects," stated the representatives of the two partners.
The agreement, which was signed at the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries in Paris, is the outcome of discussions at the last Taste-Nutriton-Health (GNS 2010) Congress on March 23 and 24, 2010 at the Palais des Congrès in Dijon that prompted F2C Innovation and PortugalFood to address two potential areas for collaboration. One area involves innovation and consumer well-being, the other focuses on the environment and sustainable development. Both partners would also like to work together on optimizing their own networks to increase their international visibility and on developing an economic intelligence policy required for capturing new markets.