NTFP industries ecosystem in Eastern Finland

Nature and natural products are important to Finland's vitality. Approximately 65% of Finland's natural product companies are located in Eastern Finland. There is also a great deal of expertise in the field in Eastern Finland, but it is scattered, and development is carried out through individual, region - level projects. This project brings together developers and companies in the natural products sector in Eastern Finland into a collaborative ecosystem. The availability of expertise, development services, and technologies for companies is also promoted by organizing development actors and service offerings into platforms that are easy for companies to access and through which RDI actors can build cooperation.

The project maps the research and development needs of the sector and addresses the most urgent of these. Through these development measures, studies, demonstrations, and validation of methods, the project promotes domestic raw material procurement, especially direct sales from pickers to small processing companies or professional kitchens, investigation and prediction of forest berry quality issues, availability of analytics for the valuable components of raw materials, as well as cooperation between the natural products and tourism sectors and the use of the name protection system.

However, the most sustainable achievement of the project will be the ecosystem itself and the resulting increase in cooperation that promotes all kinds of development in the sector. The main implementer of the project is the Measurement Technology Unit of the University of Oulu, located at the Kajaani University Consortium. The co-implementers are Arctic Flavours Association, the Ruralia Institute of the University of Helsinki, and the Natural Resources Institute Finland. The project will be implemented from January 1, 2024, to July 31, 2026, with a budget of 749,902, of which EU-funding covers 599 922 €.