Prounion

Brief history of organisation, focusing on relevant expertise:

PROUNION was established in 2010 by merging two individual companies. With its predecessors it has 13 years of experience in relevant expertise.

PROUNION is a consulting company focused on development of national and regional policies, project and programme cycle management including monitoring and evaluation, networking including clusters, education & training, support to SME through technology transfer, and serving as an innovation broker. It is active mainly in area of agriculture and rural development, environment, energy and support to small and medium enterprises.

Since very beginning, PROUNION has managed over 1 000 small development projects of various clients all over Slovakia (mainly farmers (about 400), SMEs, municipalities, universities and other). In addition, it assists Local Action Groups in preparation and implementation of LEADER strategies.

Moreover, PROUNION - contracted by the Slovak Ministry of Agriculture performed ex-post evaluation of Slovak rural development programme (RDP) 2007-2013 and ex-ante evaluation of RDP 2014-2020. Currently it evaluates Slovak RDP 2014-2020. During its work, PROUNION closely cooperates with all relevant organisations (public or private) collecting necessary data for such comprehensive evaluations.

PROUNION has been operating as a Regional Office for Nitra region of the National Rural Network. It has an access to agricultural and rural stakeholder databases of the whole National Rural Network.

At the EU level PROUNION is a member of European Rural Network Assembly and Subgroup for Innovation as well as Agricultural knowledge and innovation systems working group of the Standing committee on agricultural research (SCAR AKIS WG).

For many years PROUNION has cooperated very intensively with Slovak Agricultural and Food Chamber, its regional offices and its specific associations and unions of farmers (plant and livestock), where majority of Slovak demonstration farms are active.

PROUNION closely cooperates also with Association of Agricultural Technology suppliers in the Slovak Republic AGRION, which brings together domestic producers of agricultural, food and forestry technology as well as vendors of this technology, representing foreign manufacturing companies. AGRION is involved in almost all field days and it is familiar with leaders in innovation implementation in agricultural technology in Slovakia.

In 2015 PROUNION has initiated establishment of Bioeconomy cluster in Slovakia to support innovative SMEs not only in agricultural sector but in entire bioeconomy.

PROUNION has actively assisted in development of Technology Transfer Centre of AgroBioTech Research Centre at the Slovak University of Agriculture, which is also part of transnational network of Danube Transfer Centres and operates University Demonstration Farm.