Invest in France Agency uk Office

The cluster wants to become the center of reference for technology relating to sustainable development issues in the Indian Ocean

• “Feeding humans without drying up the land”

• Address the major challenges of food safety and the protection of plant and animal species

• Develop new “sustainable” economic sectors (ecotechnologies)

• Contribute to the discussion of participants faced with public health issues such as obesity and diabetes

 Advantages

- An island with unique advantages in France
• Reunion Island is a tropical island with significant physical constraints: as a result it has had to develop specific skills based on sophisticated technologies.
• Reunion Island is surrounded by developing countries which, despite solvency issues, have a high import demand for expertise and various types of training.
• Reunion Island is an extreme outlying region of the European Union and it applies all planned legislation with regard to safety and traceability and all measures to ensure the quality of products and processes.
• Reunion Island is a diverse, multicultural and multi-religious community, and this richness influences both its internal relations and its capacity to work with its geographical environment (India, China, Africa etc.).

- Dynamic companies
859 in the agri-food industry, which include a dozen with over 50 employees (773 with less than 10 employees; 87 with over 10 employees).

Partnerships with 5 other French innovative clusters
- Mer Bretagne and PACA clusters
- Agrimip Innovation, Midi-Pyrénées
  Industries and Agri-Resources, Picardy and Champagne-Ardenne
- European Innovation Fruits et Légumes cluster (PACA, Languedoc-Roussillon, Rhone Alps)

Members

45 members at the end of 2007

Companies: 23
    
All the companies in the cluster are SMEs

Research and Educational Institutions and Technical Centers

- 17 centers, including Université de La Réunion, Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique (CIRAD), Institut français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), Agence pour la Recherche et la Valorisation Marines (ARVAM), CITT agroalimentaire, Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en Agroalimentaire (ESIDAI) etc.
    
- 5 other organizations are also partners of the cluster, including Chambre d’Agriculture de la Réunion, Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI), Chambre des Métiers et de l’Artisanat etc.

Current R&D Partnerships (refer to appendix)

- 14 projects have been certified between 2006 and mid-2008  

- Public support example:
    Over a million euros granted by the Single Interministerial Fund (Fonds Unique Interministériel or FUI) between 2005 and 2007

International Partnerships

Current
Participation in the Agribusiness show in Mauritius from September 25 to 27, 2008

Future
- Support of companies internationally via UbiFrance
- Development of relations with the economic missions of Japan, India, the United Arab

Appendix: Selected certified R&D Projects 

• More information on Qualitropic