Towards resilience in short food chains through business collaboration and digitalisation - YDIRE
About this good practice
The project was initiated to address the challenges faced by local food companies due to the Covid-19 crisis, emphasizing the need for resilience. It focused on strengthening the regional food ecosystem in South Ostrobothnia by promoting business-to-business cooperation, networks, digitalisation, and sustainability, particularly targeting short food chains and local food companies.
The project aimed to build resilience among local food SMEs through tailored solutions including:
• Collaborative training sessions on e.g. strategic management, sustainability, and digitalisation
• Individual consultative training under de minimis rules
• Open seminars on collaboration and sustainability
• Podcasts, blogs, articles, and presentations
• A resilience assessment tool that allows companies to measure their resilience compared to other local food businesses and provides tips for improvement.
• A guide for local food businesses (titled From change flexibility to success), that introduces the concept of change flexibility and offers tips and tasks for companies to assess their situations.
The main stakeholders were the local food SMEs that participated in de minimis supported activities and other SMEs that engaged in open seminars and utilized web-based tools. The project was executed in cooperation with the University of Vaasa, the University of Helsinki Ruralia Institute, and Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences.
Resources needed
Project budget was 234 300 €. The participating SMEs had De Minimis support of 6000 € / company for consultation work. The project was carried out in cooperation with three expert organisations of the region.
Evidence of success
YDIRE project enabled tailored solutions to help food SMEs with their challenges on resilience. The participating SMEs have developed their activities based on the project activities in e.g. digitalisation. Cooperation between SMEs was increased. The project responded to an emerging need of the companies concretely helping them and developing practical tools.
Potential for learning or transfer
An example of regional project to support measuring and assessing sustainability, setting and achieving objectives. The project focuses on resilience of food SMEs and therefore also economical sustainability. The project combines cooperation of expert organisations and SMEs and provides concrete tools for SMEs.
Further information
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Good practice owner
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