Agricultural University of Plovdiv hosted the First FOCUS Group meeting on the 10th May 2018. Mainly academia was invited to participate from agriculture and food processing fields. Ms Petkova welcomed the participants on behalf of AUP and the consortium of the project. REGBEL gave a de-tail presentation of the objectives and the pro-gress of the project. Ms Petkova provided a set of questions in order to start the discussion. The seminar was held immediately after the 2nd FOCUS Steerıng commıttee meeting. Following discussions from the 2nd FOCUS SC meeting, the consequent questions arose for consideration and further clarification. Among the questions that were discussed was to share their expertise on agri-food cooperation in Bulgaria, what kind of support and ser-vices (labeling, packaging processing etc.) do the local SMEs need, their value-chain, related clusters, sec-tors and SMEs selection, Capacity Building workshops, trends/ needs and technology (innovative practic-es/ideas) to be considered.
Five Bulgarian experts in the field of agrarian sciences and food technologies were invited to take part in the meeting and discussion was held with the FOCUS partners. The Bulgarian experts shared personal ex-perience and observations on the issues identified in advance for discussion.
The dıscussıon maınly expanded through the main hubs of the three sectors in Bulgaria (dairy, oil-producing industry, and wine) that ıt could be positioned in Plovdiv. Another suggestıon was of the estab-lishing of a “Clean food” Cluster. Equal ımportant was the fact that thıs can be achieved (i.e., ingredients, processes, packaging, distribution) and must take ınto consıderatıon the structures/functions/mechanisms. The coordınator of the 1st Focus group Mrs Mariana Petkova – Asis. Prof. of Microbiology and Environmen-tal Biotechnology, AUP, she proposed a plan to select key players and policies to build an ex-ample cluster in the dairy industry. Dr. Sofia Karma, from the NTUA presented the strategy for building an internet platform of the project and training tools. Interactıve dıscussıons and valuable opınıons were exchanged.

On the 19th of April 2018, the Business Support Centre for SMEs (BSC SME) – a partner in the FOCUS project -,organized an Open Day event in Ruse, Bulgaria. The main focus was on presenting the project and the opportunities for the SMEs to join and receive advanced free of charge services. The programme also included useful presentations for the companies in the agri-food sector.
А HACCP specialist presented the new requirements of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to con-sumers, providing advice and practical examples for various prod-uct fields. The experts from the Agricultural University of Plovdiv, also a partner in the FOCUS project, provided valuable input to the event through very useful presentations that supplied more infor-mation on the biological pollutants in foods, as well as on the sci-entific approach on PCR-based detection and quantification of biological objects in the analysis of food products and ingredients.
All presentations were very stimulating and were delivered in a lively manner. The participants were really interested and commented on a lot of points raised by the experts. More-over, they stated their readiness to be part of the project’s activities and shared their views in the informal chats during the breaks, expressing at the same time their satisfaction about the organization of the event.

The FOCUS project held its Kick-off Meeting on the 12th and 13th of December 2017 in the Region of Peloponnese (REGPEL) premis-es in Tripolis, Greece. During the first day the Lead Partner, the Region of Peloponnese, welcomed all partners in Tripoli and the partners presented their organization and their roles relevant to the project. In addition, there was a presentation of the objectives, the consortium structure, the work plan and the work packages. The Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) presented an overview of the project Communication Plan (contents, activities, deliverables and programme’s communica-tion guide). On the second day of the meeting, a presentation of WP3 was made by the Agriculture University of Athens (AUA) fol-lowed by a presentation of the project’s thematic WPs by AUA, NTUA and REGPEL.

The meeting was concluded by an exchange of opinions and fur-ther discussion on the management and the implementation of the project’s activities where answers to many questions and clarifications were given.