In this short period of time, and through dialogue with many of you, I believe our joint vision is not only words, but a genuine motivation in our partners and members everyday work life. During the resource groups, meetings, events and forums I have attended these months the underlying discussions always go back to what we can achieve by combining R&D, academia, government, finance, and entrepreneurship in close collaboration with the industry. The outcome from these discussions has always focused on the possibilities and solutions we can achieve together, to face the challenges in the industry. This is, from my point of view, an underlying indicator of what we can achieve together and is a great inspiration for the cluster going forward.
In the three first years of operation, we have proven that close relationships with partners and members generate value. Together, we have facilitated more industry driven research, contributed to education programs based on the industry demand for future employees, and supported entrepreneurs with business programs, industry network and testing in the aim to facilitate innovation.
The clusters way forward is to focus strongly on our three new strategic business areas; Knowledge, Innovation and Entrepreneurship & Commercialization. We believe that these are three areas that are closely correlated and highly integrated. One depends on the other!
During the fall we will specify our strategy within entrepreneurship & commercialisation, establish resource groups and action plans in the new business area. The main goal behind it, will always be to create value for our partners and members, and enabling sustainable seafood growth. The output that we work towards is to increase and boost innovation, and match problems and needs in the industry with problem solvers that want to commercialize these solutions. We look forward to continuing this journey and seeing the results of this work.
Then some highlights of the great work that has been done in additional areas this quarter:
• Seafood Trainee – from 365 applicants, 30 candidates have been chosen for the Seafood Trainee group #4 programme. The trainees will work in 13 participating companies from August.
• KABIS – support of industry professorship and 55 MNOK project funding by NFR to support new education and more industry innovation for sustainable and innovative seafood production (KABIS).
• 1.5 MNOK in founding development of new vocational education programs in Recirculating Aquaculture Systems/RAS (closed and semi-closed systems).
• 60 MNOK in funding to NewTechAqua – a project focusing on the creation of new tools and fish farming concepts to innovate, support and improve for the whole value chain of European aquaculture.
• AquaCloud 2.0 – the 2.0 edition of the project focuses on the three workflows; 1) Revision of the standard NS 9417, 2) Standard for digital registration and processing of health data, 3) Sensor standard for standardizing input and storage of sensory data.
• SFI – expansion of situational awareness for better understanding of the interaction of fish environment, biology and behaviour. In June, over 40 stakeholders from industry, academia and tech met and discussed the way forward for this project. Delivery of application is 25th of September.
Finally, I want to welcome new share owners, board members and members in the cluster. DNB Bank, SalmoBreed, PatoGen and the University of Bergen are now owners in The NCE Seafood. Jan-Emil Johannessen and Jørn Ulheim are new board members in the company. Nord University is a new R&D partner and AlgaePro a new member. We look forward to the future cooperation with you in these roles.
The Q2 status report states more about our achievements in this quarter.
It remains to wish you all a good summer. We look forward to continuing with our inspiring project and contributing to value creation after the summer.
Best regards,
Nina Stangeland
You can read more about our activities in Q2 2019 in our Status Report Picture Status report 2019
