INFORMEST  – Service and Documentation Centre for International Economic Co-operation, is a non-profit public organisation created by the Italian Law no. 19/1991 and legally established in December 1992 by three founders: the Friuli Venezia Giulia Autonomous Region, the Veneto Region and the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE). Other shareholders are now: the Trentino - Alto Adige Region, the Autonomous Province of Trento, the Italian Union of Chambers of Commerce (Unioncamere) and other regional and local Chambers of Commerce. Its headquarters are in Gorizia, very close to the border between Italy and Slovenia. The mission of INFORMEST is to develop economic co-operation between Italian enterprises and economic operators interested in the central and eastern European Countries, in the Newly Independent States and in some Asian Countries such as China, Mongolia and Vietnam. INFORMEST main areas of activity are the following: the Assistance and Consultancy Area; the Information Services & Innovation Dept; the Development Projects Area and the EURO INFO CENTRE IT388.

INFORMEST will promote in the STARNETregio project trans-national interactions among the partners and further regional key stakeholders, thus reinforcing the link among the regions. In this regard, the organisation will be responsible for the organisation of workshops and personnel exchanges as well as for the promotion of special events to be initiated during the project, as the Joint RTD Strategy & Policy Formulation Event. It will also provide great input to the shipbuilding forum and will advise and contribute, according to its sound knowledge in promoting, to the development of most effective dissemination activities, supporting project actions also through ICT and internet technology. The organisation has a broad experience in the tasks it is instructed with, due to several projects dealing with clustering and promotion activities. In this regard, since 1999, INFORMEST has been working on industrial clusters and performed several projects focused on this theme, in particular MERCATI APERTI (2004-2006): EU programme for local development aimed at promoting international competitiveness of those enterprises located in Objective 2 and Transitory Regime areas in the Italian region "Friuli-Venezia Giulia"; the project provided for an intense economic animation necessary to strengthen the local economic system in order to integrate with EU Single Market and other foreign markets. INDE – Information Development (2003-2006): the project identified the requirements and the conditions to favour, support and foster development of productive clusters and local systems of SMEs in the Central Europe and Balkan area. VICLI - Virtual Clustering Identification (1999-2001): The goal of the project was the identification of proposals aimed at enhancing the social environment and the territorial organisation of industrial clusters, included those emerging in Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe.