Sixth edition of the Avança Café program will be launched at Expocafé 2024

The sixth edition of the Avança Café startup pre-acceleration program will be launched during Expocafé 2024, in Três Pontas (MG), on June 05th, at 10 am. The program, which has already supported 65 projects, is entering its sixth edition with the aim of encouraging the development of solutions for Brazilian coffee farming. The notice and registration form can be consulted on the Embrapa website (www.embrapa.br/cafe/avanca-cafe). The teams with the best performance will receive prizes, whose total gross value reaches R$42 thousand, sponsored by the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB). 

“The results achieved by the five previous editions of Avança Café demonstrate the importance of this project in generating innovative solutions, encouraging young people to undertake this production chain that is so significant for Brazil, which is coffee”, says Antonio Fernando Guerra, head of general of Embrapa Café. 

Registration and general rules

Teams with three to six members, with a minimum age of 18, can participate. Candidates can be high school students, technical students, undergraduates, postgraduates, administrative technicians, teachers, researchers, producers, entrepreneurs or self-employed people, who want to develop projects focused on coffee growing. 

It is not necessary to have a company incorporated. Applications for more than one project per team will be accepted, but if approved, only one will be selected for this edition.  

The teams will go through a twelve-week program to receive information that helps them transform their ideas into technology-based projects with high added value to the business, whether product or process. 

“Our goal is to help these teams transform their ideas into a potential startup. We receive applications from projects that are in the initial stage of development, in the ideation phase, or in initial operation in the coffee production chain”, explained Guerra.

Registration and the activities offered by the program are free, but the costs related to business development are the responsibility of the startup members, with the final award being an incentive to continue the project. Workshops, lectures, panels and presentation of success and failure cases will be offered, with theoretical and practical content and on the use of tools that will be used for business development. According to the teams' demands, mentoring meetings will also be held with professionals with extensive experience in the subject matter. 

The project is carried out by the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), through the Viçosa Technological Park (tecnoPARQ) and by the Federal University of Lavras (UFLA), through the Technological and Scientific Park of the Federal University of Lavras (LavrasTec), with coordination of Embrapa Café and resources from the Research Café Consortium.