Pilots

The Hub4Food pilot projects will showcase the portfolio of projects answering relevant needs of the companies in the food sector, with a focus on the marine. These pilot projects will have the following characteristics:

1. They will count on the involvement of one RTO of the project and an external SME.
2. There will be two rounds of projects of around 8 months each, beginning at M13 & M23, and therefore each RTO will develop at least two pilot projects (one per round) (therefore, a minimum of 12 pilot projects to be implemented)
3. The pilot projects will have a TRL6+- The type of activities could be feasibility studies, exploitation projects and demonstration projects, among others.

As an example of the pilots envisaged under the Hub4Food project we could have pilots that focus on interdisciplinary studies aiming to add economic value to marine food resources for their efficient and sustainable use, through the integration of value chains and implementing cost-effective and environment-friendly solutions in the blue food processing industry, developing intelligent packaging/shelf-life and processing towards new products with higher consumer acceptance, ensuring their safety, security and increasing shelf-life and nutritional value, including areas such as:

• Develop new strategies to extend the short shelf life of seafood.
• Design, development and test innovative food formulations with functional properties
• Marine biorefineries
• Design, development and test innovative marine-based products with higher added value, for improved use of undervalued fish and by-products from the fisheries and aquaculture
• Advanced image processing case study
• Production of Fish Protein Hydrolysates (FPH)
• Extraction of hydrocolloids from seaweeds
• High pressure Technology application
• Healthy validation of food products. 

Pilots will work under competitive calls for expression of interest. Once the call requirements are set, the calls will be disseminated in order to attract different enterprises (specially SMEs) from the involved regions to implement the pilot projects together with the RTOs members of the consortium. This dissemination will be done under A1.3, in the form of networking events (M10&M20) in the regions involved, and through the communication channels of Hub4Food and the members and networks of the project partners.

The selection process will work as follows: the enterprises will submit an Expression of Interest (EoI) to the different challenges/needs identified on each of the pilot projects. Once the deadline of EoI is over, the evaluation committee will assess them. The selection process will be transparent, fair, and objective, and should take into account the established requirements and criteria for the pilot projects, as well as the overall objectives and goals of the consortium.