Project to identify manufacturing strategy for small firms

A three-year pilot project on successful small enterprises in several countries coordinated by the Institute for the Promotion of Small Enterprise is to be 75 per cent financed by the European Commission.

The project is called Nissos, in Greek meaning island, and has been selected following adjudication by local and European assessors. Its aim is to search for a manufacturing strategy for small enterprises which will enable them to compete.

The project has a budget of E543,443 (Lm228,000), the largest sum allocated to a Leonardo da Vinci vocational training pilot project promoted by a Maltese partner.

It was developed for IPSE by small island specialist Godfrey Baldacchino, who will coordinate the academic aspect.

The main idea was drawn from Prof. Baldacchino's empirical research on successful small scale industries in small islands.

The contract was signed yesterday at the IPSE offices in Marsa by IPSE CEO Joe Vella Bonnici and by Robert Tufigno, chairman of the national Leonardo da Vinci coordinating committee, in the presence of Education Minister Louis Galea and Economic Services Minister Josef Bonnici.

The Nissos project will seek to assess the reasons behind the exceptional success of several small scale enterprises in the five participating European territories: Skye and the Western Islands of Scotland, Malta, Iceland, the Aland Islands of Finland, and Saaremaa island of Estonia.

The project will be undertaken by 11 partners. Apart from IPSE, there will be two partners in each participant country: one involved in technical, vocational and higher education, the other in industrial training.

The other two local partners in the Nissos project are the University of Malta and the Foundation for Human Resources Development.

A similar research project has been put together by universities in Atlantic Canada to shadow the European project. The results will eventually be compared.