18h46 – Crowdfunding: the second call for projects Crelan / Miimosa raises 122,000 euros

The second call for projects launched last February by the Crelan cooperative bank, in collaboration with the Miimosa crowdfunding platform, has enabled 30 projects dedicated to agriculture and agribusiness food to raise some 122,000 euros, we learned Saturday in the context of the Agricultural Fair Libramont.I is about 30% more than the 90,000 euros raised following the first call for projects launched in 2017. This year, 60 people responded to the call for 30 projects finally posted on the Miimosa platform. Among these 30 projects, five "favorites", all located in Wallonia, were selected and made public Saturday in Libramont. They receive an extra boost from Crelan equal to 10% of the amount raised through the crowdfunding campaign. These five favorites are a Namur project marketing candies made of 100% fruit, mostly made from local apples and pears (around 5,000 euros collected); a breeding project in Malmedy for organic and Belgian smoked trout (around 3,000 euros harvested); a project to create an organic and biodynamic wine in Saintes (more than 13,000 euros collected); a project to buy beehives and renovate a building in order to create a place "api well-being" in Merbes-Le-Château (2,500 euros collected); and a project to buy new vats for a Moustier brewery (about 37,000 euros collected). Compared to last year, Crelan sees a change in the profiles of project leaders. "Last year, there were a lot of agricultural diversification projects, and this year, it's more projects run by citizens who decided to take the food in hand," says Vincent Van Zande, Agri Market Manager at Crelan. The cooperative bank is pleased with its collaboration with the Miimosa crowdfunding platform. Rather than seeing competition between the banking world and crowdfunding, Crelan prefers to talk about complementarity. The collaboration between the two will also extend in the coming months to the equity loan or "crowdlending". (Belga)

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