On 20^th February 2018, DG GROWTH of the European Commission officially awarded the NF4-project with the ESCP-i label. The label was handed out during the award ceremony at the kick-off meeting in Brussels.  The NF4 project is an internationalization fast track accelerator for innovation-intensive food SMEs, powered by a 5-partner food clusters alliance: Clusaga (ES); Food Valley (NL); Valorial (FR); Vitagora (FR) and Wagralim (BE). The activities are  specialized on 3 food industry value chains: processed foods, health&nutritional food products and connected food. These value chains provide a full package of acceleration services, aiming at boosting international collaboration and business development of a cohort of European food SMEs. Within the project 4 overseas target markets are selected in which the consortium is already strongly connected: Canada, USA, China and Brazil.

In total to 23 "European Strategic Cluster Partnerships - Going International" (ESCP-4i) initiatives recieved the award.  The DG GROWTH supports the establishment and further development of ESCP-4i. The main goal of all Partnerships is to cooperate for joint internationalisation strategies and better support the access of SME to global value chains and markets in Europe and beyond.