EMbaRC will establish a self-sustainable community of European Microbial Resource Centres representing a large bio-diversity and offering a wide-range of not only bio-resources but also expert services. These services will enable the development of new partnerships with public institutes in the field of biodiversity and will facilitate revenue-generating partnerships with the economic sector (large food or biotech companies, research organisations, SMEs, NGO’s etc) that will be defined in a set of validate business models for Biological Resource Centres. The objective is to enable not only the EMbaRC partners but also other European BRCs, especially those who are endangered or isolated, to find complementary sources of funding to ensure their future existence. Thus EMbaRC proposes an extensive training and outreach programme targeting these collections as well as the wider research community. Furthermore providing access to the partners’ expert services via the transnational access proposed will enable EMbaRC to improve, coordinate and validate its offer to the research community from within both public and private sectors. Through its networking and harmonisation activities EMbaRC will lay down the foundations of the future Global Biological Resource Centre Network ensuring that European expertise and research are at the forefront of the International scene. Through the EMbaRC joint research programme the partners will pool their resources and expertise to collaboratively improve strain and DNA storage and develop new identification methods for microorganisms for the benefit of the wider scientific community.