The main goal of the project was to develop North Karelian SME trade and cooperation with Russia and to improve the conditions for profi table trade across the Eastern border by harnessing business expert and top-level knowledge for expanding export operations and business cooperation. The goal was to achieve industry-specific development activities in SMEs that would result in the standardisation of SME trade with Russia. One of the objectives of the project was to increase expertise of Finnish and Russian companies and development organisations and to commit affiliates to cooperation through a shared learning process and training. The second objective was to market the operational environment and opportunities offered by cooperation with Russia. The third objective was to lower the export threshold, production transfer and to standardise ongoing business activities in selected target companies in order to improve international competitiveness.