Portuguese AgroFood Cluster – Products and Services Collaborative Innovation Model

The existence of several clusters of the agrifood sector in the country, led to the fact that many actions overlap (presence at fairs, approach to certain external markets in terms of the internationalization of SMEs), so there was a need to rethink the strategy of the agrifood clusters, through the formalization of a collaborative consortium, not to exist overlap between the various actions of each cluster. The Portuguese Agrofood Cluster, allows even greater interaction between companies in the sector, facilitating the access to innovation and development, since the Centro region agrofood sector is mainly composed of small farmers with low automatic processes, and low levels of innovative products/services. The consortium also made it possible to contribute to the reinforcement of investment in the agrifood industry: number of investment projects supported by the cluster with funding from Portugal 2020 (for example, the Mobilizador Mobfood Project represents an investment of 10 million euros from industry, academia and research centers in innovation and R&D). The entities that make the Portuguese AgroFood Cluster have focused their intervention in the sector by a high dynamism promoting of the national food products in external markets, joining in favour of common objectives for the sector, as is the case of the increase of exports of the agri-food sector, with projections of increase of 16% by 2020.