Innovative value chain

By project ClusterFY

Published on 19 December 2018

Lithuania

About this good practice

SMEs working in plastic industry were struggling to grow by offering new and better products working just on their own. In order to stay competitive on the market, innovative and cross-sectoral value chain was established incompasing production stages: Injection moulding; Extrusion; Blowing; Design; Tooling; Prototyping; Thermoforming and Subcontracting. Speaking shortly, newly created cluster manages to fully cover the needs of teamed-up SMEs (value chain) and much more.
Cluster currently includes 14 companies and is a reliable network of the plastics industry enterprises – developers and producers of high added value, innovative and competitive technological products.
Chosen direction was successful and it is proven by results accomplished in a short time: turnover of member companies is growing, they are expanding into existing markets and looking for new ones. Cluster participates in national “InoLink” platform (Promotion and development of innovative networking), implements Baltic Sea Region “Innovation Express” project to expand international and inter-sectoral cooperation between Danish and Lithuanian clusters. Cluster joined European Composites, Plastics and polymer processing platform (ECP4) and European Plastics converters platforms.
Cluster has the Bronze and seeking for Silver Cluster Label. In addition, Cluster strengthens its potential for innovations, training specialists etc. The main stakeholders and beneficiaries are companies and research institutions.

Resources needed

Time frame: ~ 1 year to meet all expectations of stakeholders.
Human resources: 2 persons (Cluster manager and administrator)
Financial resources: ~ 20.000 Eur per year for staff, also bonuses depending on successfully accomplished projects.

Evidence of success

Evidence of succes can be seen physically: innovative value chain has been established, new machinery equipment for plastics moulding created, new innovative products developed inside the value chain, export volumes are growing. Cluster established relations with many international partners.
Plastic Cluster companies turnover is 89 M Euro.
More than 60% of production is exported.
Approx. 1200 work places established

Potential for learning or transfer

It is valuable story to share when few very motivated companies with a clear vision of future and deep understanding of innovation potential manages to create a fully functional innovative value chain using their own resources without public financing. On the other hand, there's a room for improvements from regions/countries side: public financial instruments for clusters could be improved, supporting an establishing of their value chains.