The “Enhancing Sales Capacity for Agri-food Products in Europe” (ESCAPE) project aims at developing and implementing aninnovative blended learning methodology to train food technology students in sales techniques.Most graduates with Master’s degrees in business are highly skilled in sales, but very often lack technical knowledge in food areas.On the other hand, Food Science programmes mostly train their graduates on technical issues, but do not provide training on salesskills. There is therefore a shortage of candidates with this highly prized dual competence. Some multinational food companiesrecognize this need and have developed graduate programmes which include training in sales techniques. However, SMEs, whichmake up the vast majority of EU food companies, are unable to develop and implement these kinds of training programmes.Against this backdrop, the main objective of the ESCAPE project is to develop an innovative training tool for food technologystudents motivated to work in sales services, in order to cater to the F&D industry needs, i.e. effective international salespersons withskills in food technology. Partners will collaborate to create an e-learning platform in English for use in a flipped classroom mode ofinstruction. It consists of a blended learning approach that moves lectures, content and activities to an online learning environmentfor individual study, followed by face-to-face active learning. The training materials will be complemented with face-to-facecollaboration and coaching activities, based on “real-world” needs and problems, during the SIAL2018 food fair.To reach its objectives, the ESCAPE project brings together 6 partners from 3 EU Member States (France, Italy and the Netherlands).The project is coordinated by Association Nationale des Industries Alimentaires (ANIA). ANIA chairs the French National TechnologyPlatform, Food For Life France, commissioned by the European Commission, which serves as a unique meeting place for foodcompanies, Ministries, Universities, Research Institutions, Clusters and Financing entities, across the food chain. Because of itsstrategic position and reputation in Europe, ANIA will be able to widely promote the ESCAPE training tool throughout Europe. ANIAwill benefit from the collaboration of two other national federations: Federalimentare in Italy and TKI Agri&Food in the Netherlands.Three HEIs delivering Master’s degrees in food science will also participate in the project: ISARA in France, Università degliStudi di Torino (UNITO) in Italy and Wageningen University in the Netherlands. These 3 leading European HEIs will develop thetraining content and support.To reach the project objectives, partners will implement a precise methodology, replicable by any interested HEI and transferable toother industrial sectors. The first step will be the definition of the specifications of the training, based on the needs of foodcompanies. All the partners will participate in this activity, which will aim at fostering cooperation between HEIs and companies. HEIswill develop the training content in English, and adapt it to the pedagogical objectives of each HEI and country. UNITO will beresponsible for the development of the platform on which the training content will be uploaded after validation by all the partners.The experimentation phase will target 20 students in each HEI. They will also have the opportunity to be coached by sales managersfrom the food sector. An analysis of the experimentation phase will be carried out so as to improve the e-learning platform ifneeded. The project will implement a wide dissemination campaign all along its lifetime. Partners will define a preciseexploitation plan in order to replicate the training in other European HEIs.The ESCAPE project should result in the development of several outputs that will have an important short-term impact:- Theoretical training ending with attractive practical training during the SIAL food fair: during 5 days, the students will be taught byfood sales professionals and will have the opportunity to exchange with them via coaching activities. This will improve the qualityand the effectiveness of the training, and lead to better student employability- A collection of reusable educational materials available in an open repository for educational and other institutions to use in theirprogrammes- A continuing education resource expandable to any working professional in related areas- A communication programme to engage other European institutionsThe ESCAPE consortium aims at providing the 28 EU MS with a suitable and relevant tool to help the European F&D industry recruitqualified professionals to sell food products on national and international markets. The ESCAPE methodology and platform will beeasily transferable to any European HEI and will improve the qualifications F&D professionals, a key factor in boosting thecompetitiveness of the sector.

Food business is the first sector in terms of employment in Europe, 90% of food companies being SMEs (majority of them being micro enterprises). Though innovation is the main leverage to improve competitiveness, there is neither high enough innovation and entrepreneurship spirit nor innovation transfer from High Education Institutes (HEI) to business. The partners of this consortium, involved for years in initiatives aiming at fostering innovation and interactions between students and industry on the basis of project-based learning approach, identified limits of the current training approaches. The project performance will be notably assessed against the generation of new products or processes and the creation of value and long term collaborations. For this purpose, it will create a European FoodBusiness Transfer Laboratory that will centralize new educational content and tools to foster stimulate entrepreneurship entrepreneurial skills and will allow constructive interactions between HEIs and foodbusiness stakeholders. Supported by a shared web-platform allowing multidisciplinary knowledge exchanges between the partners, this project will also produce best practices for entrepreneurship development, new learning and teaching approaches in closer contact with industry, etc. Taken together, FOODLAB project’s results will homogenize educational approaches; improve interactions between academia and industry; develop entrepreneurship spirit; foster innovation and competences transfer; promote integration of young graduated in SMEs. Ultimately this project will be the basis of competitiveness improvement in food SMEs and bigger companies. It will also help to maintain and increase employment in food sector and possibly in other sectors, as the present project is designed to allow transfer of methodology and best practices in training to other sectors.

The cold chain permits to process and commercialise in good conditions of quality and safety a wide range of foods. However the cold chain represents high energy consumption. OPTICOLD objective is to increase sustainability of the cold chain by optimising the compromise between energy consumption, safety, quality and shelf life for refrigerated processed foods. Cold chain is currently managed to respect target temperatures, determined by regulation and specifications agreed among stake-holders. OPTICOLD project proposes a new approach, aiming at a multi-criteria management of the cold chain, with a main role for minimisation of energy consumption. To meet this objective, OPTICOLD project will build a global model of the cold chain, by linking energy consumption with variables that determine food shelf life: its microbiological safety and its quality. This type of model does not exist at the moment for the whole cold chain. It will be established using the relations linking all these variables, energy consumption, safety and quality, to the temperatures of the cold chain. In particular cold in the food processing plant, for which scientific knowledge is lacking, but for which empirical professional knowledge indicates a high potential to save energy, will be studied in priority. A management of cold chain based in priority on energy consumption will permit to reduce energy consumption, but it may results in cold temperatures distribution more prone to deteriorate quality and safety (the variables determining shelf life). It is therefore necessary to develop multicriteria approaches to determine the margins of action on temperature distributions, or “acceptable variations for cold temperatures”, considering the requirements for quality and safety. This implies the most accurate prediction of safety and quality as a function of cold temperatures. A the moment, relations between food safety or quality and cold temperatures are described with important uncertainties, which imply important margins of safety on the temperature regimes of the cold chain, and therefore over-spending of energy. OPTICOLD will therefore integrate to the studies on energy consumption, researches on the physiology of cold adaptation in bacteria and researches in bio-physic on plant tissues destructuration, as the cause of non-microbiological spoilage of raw plant foods. In an optimised cold chain, the relation built in the project between energy cost and the shelf-life variables will permit to quantify the gain in energy consumption reduction with the consecutive loss in shelf-life, for all the steps of the chain. Then the steps for which the most important gain in energy consumption can be obtained for the least loss in shelf life will be identified. The approach of the OPTICOLD project will be developed on processed, refrigerated foods. Three food categories will be studies, to cover very different conditions to impart a generic dimension to the project: living food with a physiological activity which spoilage is mostly not microbiological (fresh cut salads), dead and raw food (fresh pastry dough), pasteurized chilled food (fresh pasteurized pasta). The possibilities to generalize the OPTICOLD approach developed on these three food categories to other types of foods will be studied.

There are new challenges and opportunities for agriculture today, driven by the climate change, the greening of the products and processes, the reuse of side-stream products, the raised complexity of the chain and the increased availability of information.However, to successfully address and react to these drivers, agriculture and forestry needs new business models and skills. The identification of existing and emerging skills needs in bio-economy, agricultural sustainability and for the use of digital technology, is of paramount importance in order to develop a strategic approach to keep the European agricultural sector competitive and sustainable in the long term.The multi-stakeholder approach in the FIELDS project, with 30 partners from 12 countries (HEI, VET providers, agricultural and forestry sector representatives and agrifood industry) will allow tackling the complexity of the issues EU agriculture faces today.The FIELDS approach, starting from the current and future trends and skills needed, will lead to a sustainable European strategy to address these skill gaps. Since agriculture issues and opportunities differs a lot from country to country, the EU strategy will be customised to have a country strategy for 7 countries. It will address country-specific actions, occupational profiles and training material to reflect the country needs while keeping EU quality standards (ESCO, EQAVET, ECVET) to address the mobility of learners through Europe concretely.An Agriculture SSA will be established during the project to build upon the regulatory frameworks and opportunities at EU and country level, while proposing concrete and practical initiatives to address skills challenges, in particular through offering modular training inside the project while guaranteeing mobility of workers within the agriculture, forestry and agrifood industry.