House of Food | Factory for the future
by: Gaël Staelens, VIVES University College and Katelijne Vancleemput, Factory of the Future
The food industry is an important economic activity of West-Flanders. 925 food processing enterprises are situated in West-Flanders, of which 90 percent SME’s. Although the food industry offers 16.000 job opportunities in West-Flanders, it is facing a number of challenges. Innovation measures are therefore more important than ever.
The challenges that the food industry are facing:
- Finding motivated and well-educated employees
- Critical availability of natural resources such as water and energy
- Continuous product and process innovation
- Increasing the low entrepreneurs ratio
- Increasing the working space for entrepreneurship
- Improving the image of the food industry
- Improving collaboration to increase the speed of innovation and growth
The ‘House of Food’ is situated in Roeselare, the heart of the West-Flemish food industry, and is the operating base of the ‘Factory for the Future’ (FfF). FfF is a unique partnership between government, private companies and knowledge institutions that encourages growth of the West-Flemish industry. One of its objectives is to support SME’s, stimulate and prepare them to switch from traditional to future-oriented and innovation-driven enterprises. To do this, they offer services such as:
- start-up facilities: meeting facilities & co-working space for 2 to 250 persons,
- a cooking lab for educational packages, workshops and product presentations,
- a sensoric lab for sensory research,
- a joblab for kids to experience jobs in the food industry and
- a foodlab where companies, students and start-ups can use analytical devices for their product innovation.
Contact information:
Gaël Staelens
VIVES University College
gael.staelens@vives.be
www.vives.be
Katelijne Vancleemput
Factory of the future
katelijne.vancleemput@pomwvl.be