The war in Ukraine has brought together Ukrainian clusters and SMEs in a unique alliance, the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance (UCA). Starting in March as Clusters4Ukraine, it grew fast, renamed itself to Ukrainian Cluster Alliance and has grown ever since. EIT Manufacturing is honoured to collaborate with UCA and welcomes the organisation as a network partner.

As a union of Ukrainian clusters, UCA has a focus on industrial and high-tech clusters. Activities at national level cover all main Ukrainian industries and are strongly oriented towards internationalisation. As of July, the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance united 37 cluster organisations with more than 1900 enterprises.

Initial online meeting as a starting point

In a first online meeting with 25 participants from innovation and automation manufacturing companies, Dr Christian Bölling, Director of EIT Manufacturing Central had the opportunity to introduce EIT Manufacturing to the audience. There was a big interest from participants. After this initial meeting, there will be another at the end of August, so that questions can be answered.

Network partnership for win-win situations

The agreement of the network partners involves a number of activities such as joint events, communications as well as collaboration in identifying funding opportunities for projects.

Partnership started with networking in Vienna

Olga Trofymova, Cluster Manager of Ukrainian Automotive and Mobility Cluster, joined the UCA and took the responsibility for internationalisation and international relations.

Read more about the development of the cluster in Alexandre Yurchak’s LinkedIn article published 22 May 2022.

Source: European Institute of Innovation & Technology (https://bit.ly/3OQG3bc)