With assistance of Enterprise Europe Network Russia Modules A (Russian agency for small and medium business support) and Module B (Russian Technology Transfer Network) as well as Novosibirsk Correspondence Center, Module A (Innovation Center Koltcovo) the participation of the company Dia-Vesta LTD in the 4th Taste-Nutrition-Health International Congress and the Brokerage Event within it in Dijon, France (March 18 to 20, 2009) has been organized.

The company addressed Enterprise Europe Network Russia, Novosibirsk Correspondence Center for finding a partner to establish joint manufacture of the muesli bars with prebiotics and probiotics developed by Dia-Vesta. Working together with Enterprise Europe Network Russia and Department of Science, Technologies and Space of the French Embassy in Moscow, the Center provided the whole package of services such as marketing and business consulting, making a technology profile, presentations, commercial proposals, hand-outs, advertisement materials, visa documents, finding Russian-French simultaneous interpreter etc.

Dia-Vesta had 12 B2B meetings, among which 3 meetings were requested by Dia-Vesta and other 9 meetings were initiated by the European participants who were extremely interested in cooperation with Dia-Vesta. The main result was establishment of the contact with Vitagora cluster (Dijon, France). Development of the contact with Vitagora resulted in finding 5 companies in France that produce muesli bars and could be potential partners for Dia-Vesta. The participation of the first and by now the only Russian company at the 4th International Taste-Nutrition-Health Congress is a very positive example of real cooperation between the Enterprise Europe Network and Russian Business Innovation Networks.

And now we are happy to announce that attending an international event despite many difficulties (needs in visas, profiles, presentations, hand-outs, advertisement materials etc.) resulted in Partnership Agreement signed between the Russian company Dia-Vesta and the Slovenian company Fructal.

Fructal and Dia-Vesta share same vision of healthy and responsible production. After presentation of both companies, meeting held in Fructal and visit of production site both companies agree to proceed with joint project, that is production of fruit snack-bars with probiotics (bifido- and lactobacteria).

At the first stage a testing sample of the products will be made. For this Dia-Vesta will produce a substance of probiotics and transfer it to Fructal with all the technical specifications on how to include the substance into the fruit snack-bars. Fructal then will make the bars using the recipes of its own products.

After testing the sample and basing on the results the parties plan to start making the snack fruit-bars for sale on the markets of Russia and possibly European countries.

This great achievement of Enterprise Europe Network as a whole was made due to persistent work of Enterprise Europe Network Russia, Module A hosted by the Russian Agency for Small and Medium Business Support, Novosibirsk Correspondence Center, Module A (Innovation Center Koltcovo) and the EEN Slovenia (Jozef Stefan Institute, Technology Transfer Office, Enterprise Europe Network).

The Eropean Union is, by far, Russia main trading partner, accounting for more than half of its overall foreign trade. We strive to help Russian and EU SMEs to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by falling trade barriers between Russia and the EU.