KET4CleanProduction Newsletter - Issue #5

Welcome to the fifth KET4CleanProduction Newsletter, an edition focusing on Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) and cooperation opportunities among Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and KET Technology Centres.
The EU-funded project KET4CleanProduction aims to help SMEs tackle their clean production challenges while being innovative, competitive and sustainable. By encouraging the use of advanced manufacturing technologies and related key enabling technologies, the production processes are expected to upgrade towards a more energy and material efficient state.

The last Micro Grant cut-off date is 30^th June 2020: Apply now!

Micro Grants are offered for transnational cooperation projects between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and minimum 2 KET technology centres (KET TCs), which aim to integrate key enabling technologies (KET) to solve clean production challenges. Focus is on upgrading production processes.

During the past 7 cut-off dates, more than 50 applications were submitted and 33 projects were funded.

Get inspired by our new Success Stories!

We are proud to show how SMEs and KET-TCs reach tangible results for clean production via their collaborative projects funded by KET4CleanProduction.

In the 6th cut-off date we have 8 Micro Grant Winners. Each one was granted 50.000 EUR  to work on Clean Production via key enabling technologies!

These are the stories of the #MicroGrantWinners in a nutshell.

Regional policy recommendations from the KET4CleanProduction project

Pan-European KET4CleanProduction micro grant is unique existing incentive and financial mechanism on EU level that is tailored to the needs of SMEs to implement cleaner production processes using Key Enabling Technologies (KET) services across borders.

Key policy recommendation to the public authorities in the EU-27 countries were developed during the project to design and implement KET financial instrument nationally and/or regionally. Policymakers are encouraged to make use of European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and other funds to engage their regional technology centers and infrastructures to collaborate with other KETs technology Infrastructures across borders so bridge the service and technology gap in their region.

National/regional implementation of the KET financial instrument shall be based on Pan-European ket4sme.eu platform that creates a one-stop technology consultancy targeted at SMEs’ where SMEs and other relevant actors can access services offers derived from the capabilities of partner KET Technological Centers (TC).

The benefits of introducing KET financial instrument are synergic both for public authorities and for SMEs: improving the competiveness of the SMEs via internationalization and transnational KET-TC/SME collaboration, in accordance with the countries’ national or regional Smart Specialization Strategy.

KET financial instrument will foster the use of advanced manufacturing technologies and related Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to upgrade their production processes and entire value chain towards resource and energy efficiency.

KET4CleanProduction invites Enterprise Europe Network members to join the community

KET4CleanProduction’s ambition is to establish a growing open innovation ecosystem among KET Technology Centers (TCs) and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with the support of Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) partners. As our network is scaling up, more EEN members are invited to join the community. Our aim is to create a sustainable web-based platform in order to facilitate SMEs to access solutions for a more efficient, clean production and strengthen their competitiveness.

If you are EEN partner, you can promote the services of the KET4CleanProduction platform to your local manufacturing SMEs and support them submit their Technology Request.

A special training for EEN partners is available here to guide you. Don’t forget to ask for your certificate, when you’re done!

Do you want to learn everything about KET4CP?

The training programme is developed mainly for newcomer EENs who wish to get a tool for keeping their old clients and attracting new ones.

Furthermore, by approaching the KET4CP Network, the EENs will increase their competitiveness in every regard.

SMEs, in general, do not have the time to prepare time-intensive and thus costly proposals for funding applications.
That is why we need more partners to create a significant increase in outreach and in-depth services for manufacturing SMEs across Europe.

KET4CleanProduction in OI2LAB’s webinar

On Friday 13th March 2020 OI2Lab – the European Open Innovation Platform of INVITE project – hosted five highly innovative European Projects offering services and financial supports to European SMEs.

KET4CleanProduction was presented with a focus to funding opportunities for SMEs towards a clean production.