SHEALTHY Project aims to assess and develop an optimal combination of non-thermal sanitization, preservation and stabilization methods to improve the safety while preserving the nutritional and organoleptic quality and prolonging the shelf-life of fresh and minimally processed F&V products.
By combining and modulating non-thermal technologies with minimally processing operations, SHEALTHY will respond to consumers’ demand for fresh, healthy, convenient, sustainable and locally produced and additive-free food which is safe and nutritious.
But the relatively high costs to procure these minimal processing technologies require high innovation and investment capacity that traditional micro and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) cannot afford. To increase their competitiveness, and bridge this gap in the food sector, these traditional food companies call for novel inclusive and collaborative business models based on sharing processing facilities, cooperating with other actors along the value chain, that result in increased transparency, flexibility and innovation capacity.
As this project is highly SME-driven, the novel washing, stabilisation, and preservation methodologies will be tuned to match the requirements of the SMEs needs. Thus, the processing technologies will be set up considering both the size of the enterprises (they are micro and SMEs) and adapted to the F&V volume treated. In this way, novel business models (BMs) tailored to the regional SMEs needs will be designed to support the adoption of the mentioned technologies. To realise this, an insight over the competencies affecting SMEs’ success, the value creation driver of BMs and the usage of BM techniques supporting innovation process is necessary.
This is why, if you are an F&V SME, we need you! We are researching which capabilities are crucial for EU food SMEs to adopt advanced technologies and how firm strategies impact performances. Furthermore, we aim at analysing the main factors that may hinder or boost the activities related to the different logistics and transport processes, within agri-food value chain.
Please, help us answering this Survey and, if you are not an SME you can still send it to your contacts! Whatever information you provide will be kept strictly confidential/anonymous and will be only used for research purposes.
Your collaboration will facilitate the transition towards a new collaborative agrifood ecosystem for traditional, local and rural SMEs around EU!
