Data-driven fermentation management. Egg processing with enhanced data integration. A smart system for real-time monitoring of evaporation in wine aging. These are just three examples of the 14 projects involving 28 SMEs that receive funding from the pan European project S3FOOD for Digital Industry 4.0 transition.

This month, the second S3FOOD voucher call selected 14 innovative SME driven projects all across Europe. These projects which will receive funding to develop and adopt innovative digital solutions to concrete challenges food processing companies are facing to modernise and improve food production.

The 14 cross – sectorial collaboration projects will receive different types of vouchers totalling nearly 1.3 million Euros. The types of vouchers vary depending on the development stage of the project. The earliest stage projects receive up to 15,000 Euro while the larger scale collaboration projects can receive up to 180,000 Euro.

Cross-border ecosystem
“The idea with S3FOOD is to establish an innovation-friendly, cross-border and cross-sectoral ecosystem to help SMEs start their Industry 4.0 transition. Companies that still rely on a few in-house specialists to register and interpret processing data are at risk of losing important knowledge and expertise. Using for instance smart sensors, they can secure it all in automated systems and bring sustainable benefits to their business, improve efficiency and quality of the production methods,” says Veerle De Graef, Innovation Manager, Flanders’ FOOD– coordinator of the S3FOOD project.

Besides the funding, being a part of S3FOOD also grants the 14 projects access to industry experts, knowledge sharing, a solid network of like-minded SMEs and much more.

A revolution in progress

With the fourth industrial revolution – the digital revolution – in progress, many larger companies have already responded by automating and digitalising their process. This includes benefiting from the related data generation, which opens the door to identify processing issues quicker and gives opportunities for continuous improvement.

S3FOOD targets the many SMEs in the agri-food industry in Europe, that have still not found the partners and funds to start the same journey towards digitalization.

The S3FOOD has already supported 44 projects with 51 unique SMEs across Europe and now adds 14 new projects to the portfolio.

“While we are still in the middle of the S3FOOD project, we can already begin to see the results of the first projects that received the funding vouchers. It’s fascinating to see how SMEs can truly benefit from the latest technology, and we are happy to be able to welcome another 14 projects to S3FOOD, and to the future of food production,” says project leader Veerle De Graef.

About S3FOOD:

S3FOOD is a 5 million Euro Innosup – 01 project under H2020 that aims to stimulate the uptake of smart sensor solutions by the small and medium sized enterprises in the agri-food sector with the purpose of improving efficiency, sustainability and safety. S3FOOD started in May 2019 and has launched two voucher calls where SMEs could apply for funding for the implementation of innovative digital solutions to concrete challenges of the food processing industry.

The S3FOOD consortium consists of 13 partners from across Europe: Flanders’ FOOD, Belgium; INNOSKART, Hungary; AgriFood Capital BV, The Netherlands; AIN, Spain; ASINCAR, Spain; Bretagne Développement Innovation, France; CLUSAGA, Spain; CORALLIA , Greece; Food & Bio Cluster Denmark, Denmark; DSP Valley, Belgium; Food-Processing Initiative, Germany; CIMES, France; and Wagralim, Belgium.

Read more about S3FOOD on www.s3food.eu or follow the project on LinkedIn and twitter: @s3food_eu

S3FOOD has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 824769-S3FOOD.