RERAM responds to the societal challenge of ‘CLIMATE CHANGE, RESOURCE EFFICIENCY AND RAW MATERIALS’ in Europe’s forestry and woodworking sector. Knowledge, communication and cooperation gaps between research communities and innovation-driven industries significantly hamper progress towards sustainable use of the natural resource FOREST in the woodworking sector. The RERAM project targets the very low resource efficiency rate of the wood processing business in ENP Eastern Countries. The 12 partner consortium builds upon their previous collaboration between forerunner regions in Germany (NRW), Austria (Styria) and Ukraine (Carpathia), and reaches out to complementary R2I actors in neighbouring ENP countries Moldavia and Georgia, and Poland, and further beyond. RERAM bridged the gaps in the forest and wood sector’s research to innovation chain to unlock significant saving potentials of raw materials and wastes in woodworking SMEs, and to seize a major opportunity of improving green production and climate change mitigation in these emerging hotspot forest regions. By raising awareness on gains from higher efficiency, and by offering targeted benchmarking, hands-on best practices, information on best available techniques as well as training and coaching measures to entrepreneurs and intermediaries involved in RTI support, the project enhanced competitive capacities of the regions for future joint actions under Horizon 2020. By means of its dissemination channels and joint activities, RERAM built interfaces to various existing collaborative actions and platforms, promoting cross-organizational and cross-regional dialogues, distilling complementarities, supporting a stronger intertwining of compatible regions and actors, and aligning mutual R2I strategies for increased resource efficiency, sustainable growth and innovation in the ENP Eastern Countries.