The University of York and Maastricht University launched a partnership in 2017 to establish joint research projects, teaching collaborations, knowledge exchange, student exchanges, and to share best practice among their staff. These research and education programmes were supported by a €3m joint investment to encourage and facilitate innovations to tackle challenges to developing a more sustainable future.
FixOurFood team members Prof Bob Doherty, Dr Ulrike Ehgartner and Prof Peter Ball recently secured an award for €60,000 with colleagues from Maastricht University from the ‘Greener Futures fund’ offered through the partnership.
This collaborative piece of work between the FixOurFood team at York and the School of Business Economics at Maastricht University, will focus on identifying the key success factors in business models that are innovating for net-zero. These will then be developed into a Greener Business toolkit design guide for businesses who want to develop strategies for net-zero and will display options from a product life cycle perspective, from ‘farm to fork’. The team plan to target businesses in UK and Netherlands to rapidly change their business model design with a net zero pathway and then make the validated toolkit available to others.
The team also aims to produce policy briefs for the UK and Netherland governments and envisages cross-regional learning between sustainable entrepreneurial endeavours in the Maastricht and Yorkshire regions, further benefitting the FixOurFood programme.
Here are some examples of sustainable food-related businesses in the Maastricht and Yorkshire regions Mosa meat, Bisschopsmolen, Pieke Broodbier, Looop, Mighty Pea, Food Circle York, Spark York.