CURIOST – Interreg Central Europe

Circular design and development of Sustainable products in 4 key sectors in Central Europe

CURIOST project is based on idea that the circular economy is a key enabler for innovative sustainable product development. Project aims at enabling SMEs + small midcaps to exploit their potential in innovative sustainable product development and profit from matching business cases in 4 key sectors – mechanics and mechatronics, packaging, plastics and construction and building.

Consisting of two-fold approach, CURIOST aims to develop a comprehensive strategy which will be transformed into an action plan, which will be presented to policymakers to serve local businesses. Implementation of strategy on operative level will be conducted through innovative product development process where Project Partners will select 30 most motivated companies, out of 140, to be part of pilots to develop tailor-made, innovative, sustainable and circular product prototypes. To initiate change in all targeted sectors of the partner regions in Central Europe, matching business cases will be aggregated into a universal solution which will accelerate the green transition in the Central European economy.

ConPlusUltra as project partner coordinates activities of making integrated strategic analysis of legislation and policy framework in respective project partner regions, as well as creating transnational CURIOST Action Plan which will provide key measures to support the uptake of sustainable product development solutions by SMEs and small mid-caps in the 4 targeted manufacturing sectors.
Project is supported by ERDF in amount of 1.518.160 EUR, while total eligible budget is 1.897.700 EUR.

Project partners

Project leader is Business Upper Austria, from Austria with following partners:

ConPlusUltra LTD, Austria
University of Economics Bratislava, Slovakia
Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Pecs– Baranya, Hungary
South Poland Cleantech Cluster Ltd, Poland
STEP RI science and technology park of the University of Rijeka Ltd, Croatia
Development and Training Centre for Metal Industry- Metal Centre Čakovec, Croatia
MESAP Innovation Cluster, Italy
Science and Technology Park- Envipark, Italy
Bayern Innovativ, Germany
Cluster of Environmental Technologies Bavaria, Germany