The InnovaWood General Assembly 2009 was held in Valencia, Spain, from 27 – 28 January, hosted by AIDIMA, - Furniture, Wood and Packaging Technology Institute.

The two days meeting included also the workshops on research and development, education, knowledge transfer and environment. As part of our General Assembly event this year we were very pleased to have three guest speakers: Dr Catherine Halbert from Halbert Research Ltd, who gave a talk on “Successful EC Proposals - An evaluators Perspective”, Dr. Andreas Kleinschmit (FTP Manager) and Victoria Lerma (FTP), whose presentations focused on Forest-Based Sector Technology Platform (FTP) in general and FP7 New calls for 2009-2010 related to the sector. The InnovaWood management used this occasion also to announce the Memorandum of Understanding between FTP that entered into on 1st December 2008. The purpose of the MoU is to outline the areas of cooperation between two organisations. The main cooperation lines will be developed on: participation in each other’s organisation, supporting organisation of common events, resource sharing and access to common target groups.
This event was also an opportunities for the InnovaWood members to discuss the future strategy of the network and participation in common research and development projects.

Upon conclusion of IW GA, the IW members had a chance to visit two successful wood sector companies in Valencia region, FRESAMA, a company focused on the 1st Wood Transformation and Mariner, a classic Valencia furniture factory. The last GA day concluded with visit to the premises of AIDIMA where the members gained insights into the facilities and activities of this organisation.

All presentations from the event can be found under Intranet- Meeting section.