RDP project database

Food Centre LounaFood is a project in the food service sector. It provides targeted assistance to food producers, mainly Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) from the region of South-West Finland and promotes local food.

Key sectors in Southwest Finland's food industry include: bakery, slaughtering / meat processing, processing of vegetables, fruits and berries, milk processing, flour milling, beverage production and fish processing. Some 300 food SMEs are based in this region and the organisation LounaFood acts as coordinator of their development and marketing needs. LounaFood identified demand to strengthen consumer recognition of its members' food products and sought RDP assistance for this activity.

The main purposes of the project involved providing support to the small and medium size food companies from Southwest Finland via rural development techniques that improved their products' familiarity in different market outlets. As a result, the project also aimed to promote local and traditional food culture throughout the region and contribute to the region's distinctive gastronomic identity.

Project work carried out reflected LounaFood's specialisms in providing a variety of training and capacity building packages for small-scale entrepreneurs in the food industry. Considerable effort was invested in raising awareness and skills levels in topics and techniques such as marketing, direct sales, branding, new product development and customer relations.

Project outcomes have strengthened the long-term capacity of food SMEs in Southwest Finland to compete effectively. RDP support has also helped the rural businesses involved to secure a stronger understanding of the markets that they operate in. Other benefits include improved consumer identification of local products.

Collaborative approaches to regional branding of food (and other) products can be cost efficient and lead to stronger rural economies which provide customers with better quality products (which are produced using systems based on informed demand).

South-West Finland

Varsinais-Suomi

Mainland

799 510

353 929

353 930

91 652

https://www.lounafood.net/

Sanna Vähämiko

sanna.vahamiko@utu.fi

+358 2 333 6475

English, Finnish, Swedish