2025 FAST TRACK TO MARKET INITIATIVE – SPRING

Description

The purpose of the Fast Track to Market is to accelerate the commercial activities of SMEs that result in impactful technologies, products, and services reaching the market and scaling further in the food sector. We are looking for fast-moving, mature SMEs. They are often perfectly aware of the missing pieces of knowledge, technology, or market validation needed to deliver concrete and marketable products, services, or processes. Their B2B/B2C technological solutions are close to the market. The extra support that EIT Food offers via association with the world’s largest and most dynamic food innovation community can speed up the marketability and potential commercial success of their solutions. Proposed projects should aim to significantly shorten the time to market of innovations while guaranteeing as much as possible a marketable outcome for the SMEs. Project activities should therefore be strictly related to commercialisation, including but not limited to, post-pilot implementation activities, pre-launch product development, sales development, consumer promotions, merchandising, trade advertising, establishment of distribution channels, etc. These activities could illustratively include the hiring of local sales staff, subscriptions to sales and CRM software, purchasing of raw materials, last-mile R&D costs, execution of distribution contracts, creation of marketing materials, travel to industry conferences and/or trade shows, etc.

Beneficiary & submission

All submitted applications will undergo an eligibility check and evaluation to determine their feasibility and suitability for funding. The evaluation will be conducted by a minimum of 3 external evaluators and 1 internal evaluator, based on the criteria below. All evaluators have been selected in an open and transparent process. All evaluators, both internal and external, are trained extensively on the European Union´s Code of Conduct for Evaluators, namely on the importance of transparency, fair treatment of all applicants, confidentiality and how to avoid conflict of interest. Evaluators must contractually agree to recuse themselves in the event of a conflict of interest. The evaluation will have the following structure: EIT Food will compile a preliminary ranking of all proposals that scored above the Quality Threshold of 3.5. Those proposals above the threshold will be invited to a live teleconference at a specific date and time. The purpose of the panel is for the evaluators and the applicant members to meet; the applicants will pitch, followed by a Q&A session for the evaluators to resolve any open questions from the evaluation. They may amend their scoring based on the answers provided by the applicants. Protocol: · Prior to the Panel Meeting, expert evaluators and internal EIT Food staff will review the selected proposals and prepare questions for the applicants. · At the Panel Meeting, each applicant will make a short introduction followed by a Q&A session with the evaluators. The quality threshold for selection is a total score of 3.5. Proposals will be selected based on a final ranking until the funding is exhausted.

Further information

Details are available here: https://www.eitfood.eu/open-calls/fast-track-to-market