The European METASTAR project, in which CTA participates as a consortium partner, has just opened a service call for different types of bonds for SMEs. This project is part of the Euroclustes initiative and aims to increase the resilience of European SMEs in the aerospace and defense sector and promote the collaboration of European aerospace clusters, as well as their interaction with other clusters related to technologies of interest to the aerospace sector such as are ICT or the energy sector.

The project will open several calls for different types of bonds for SMEs. The call to request the first block of bonds, which has just been opened and can be requested until December 31, 2023 or until the bonds are exhausted, is aimed at providing funds for the outsourcing of technological innovation services related to the green technologies development, digitization, improvement of capacities or resilience, internationalization (with Japan or Canada) or services to increase the security of information systems of European SMEs. The limits of the amounts that can be obtained for each of the types appear in the figure below and the beneficiaries may be European SMEs in the aerospace and defense sector.

The call for innovation projects in the aerospace and defense sector is expected to open in April, with a series of bonds available to finance up to 17 projects, nine of them must have TRL between 3 and 5 and eight of them between TRL 5 and 7. The beneficiaries must again be European SMEs in this sector. In addition, some beneficiaries will be able to opt for one of the 5 awards announced for the best projects in the field of resilience, sustainability and digital transformation.

It is important to note that each beneficiary will only be able to accumulate bonds up to a value of €60K, obtained at most two of the bonds offered by the project.

For this first call for innovation services, the adjudication procedure is by order of arrival of the applications, so if you are interested, please do not delay in the application.

To facilitate access to it, we collect the information of interest below:

• Link to the call: http://www.dolinalotnicza.pl/en/wiadomosci/open-call-for-innovation-services-for-smes,59.html
• Link to the voucher application platform for innovation services: https://www.f6s.com/metastars-call-for-innovation-services
• Link to the project website: http://www.dolinalotnicza.pl/en/metastars/