- Successful participation: The conference attracted an impressive 250 participants throughout the day
- First PEIC Audience Award: Star Robotics won the award for its innovative robot designed to support port surveillance and security
- Strategic networking: The event facilitated direct connections between the three fundamental pillars of the innovation ecosystem: startups, corporations, and venture capital, generating opportunities for collaboration
Valencia, October 23, 2025. – Opentop has successfully held the third edition of PEIC (Port Entrepreneurship International Congress), an event that has established itself as a key meeting point for innovators, investors, companies, and institutions from the international port community, within the framework of the VDS (Valencia Digital Summit) held at the City of Arts and Sciences.
The day began with an official welcome from Mar Chao, president of the Port Authority of Valencia, and Antonio Torregrosa, general director of the Valenciaport Foundation, who highlighted Valenciaport’s commitment to port innovation.
This was followed by a round table discussion on PIN, the network of innovative ports co-founded by Opentop, where the global PIN Challenge was presented. This session was attended by representatives from port innovation hubs such as The PIER (Halifax), homePort (Hamburg), Port of Tyne (United Kingdom), and Blue Economy Incubator of the Port of San Diego, in a session moderated by Salvador Furió, Director of Innovation at the Valenciaport Foundation. New members were also officially welcomed: thinkport VIENNA, the network’s first river port, and the port of Esbjerg (Denmark).
Throughout the day, the conference was structured around “Innovation Lighthouses” or thematic round tables that addressed relevant challenges in the sector: Blue Economy (with the participation of Biobright, Ocean Ecostructures, Sea Grown), supply chain efficiency (with the presence of Elonroad, Passify, and Aeler), security and resilience (with Gaist, Cyraco, and Quantum Harbour), and energy transition. Each block combined presentations by innovative startups with analysis by industry experts. On stage were 20 startups—75% from outside our borders—that had been carefully selected following an international call for applications launched in June.
A distinctive feature of the event was the “Investment Squad,” a reverse pitching session where venture capital funds such as onenorth Ventures, Signal Ventures, Maersk Growth, and Freight Ventures presented their initiatives and investment theses to attendees, reversing the traditional format to facilitate more effective meetings.
The conference also placed a special focus on the energy transition in ports, with a keynote speech by Grant Brown of Hitachi Europe and a specific round table on sustainability, decarbonization, and energy that brought together companies such as PowerUp Energy Technologies, Arrecife Energy Systems, and Walker Subsea Engineering.
The live demonstration sessions allowed eight startups to showcase their products and services interactively, including solutions for maritime identification (Hamsa ID), autonomous marine robotics (Marinerob), container management and optimization (Connectainer), port analytics (Ensemble Analytics), predictive techniques (Inguru Predict – HUPI), compliance management software (Stowlog), sustainable cooling (Cooling Photonics), and the award-winning Star Robotics, with a robot to assist in surveillance and security.
The event concluded with a session on public-private collaboration with the participation of the European Space Agency (ESA), highlighting the synergies between different technology sectors, followed by the conclusions of the interesting day, delivered by Juan Manuel Díez, head of innovation at the Port Authority of Valencia.
This was followed by the presentation ceremony for the first “PEIC AWARD,” a prize chosen by attendees who were able to vote via a mobile platform.
Jorge Marcos, Lead Project Manager at Opentop, expressed his pride in the success of the event: “This third edition has brought international recognition for the open innovation we are doing at Valenciaport. We have brought great speakers and many attendees to Valencia, creating a unique networking space that brings together startups, corporations, and venture capital, three key elements that have come together in person at the PEIC. The satisfaction expressed by all attendees about how fruitful the international conference has been greatly encourages us as organizers, because it reinforces our role in bringing entrepreneurship closer to the port community and motivates us to start preparing for the next edition.“
Events such as PEIC 2025 demonstrate that Valencia is positioned as a hub for European port innovation, attracting talent, capital, and transformative ideas that will shape the future of the global maritime and port industry.
The PEIC 2025 conference is organized by Opentop, the open innovation initiative of the Valenciaport Foundation, with the support of the Port Authority of Valencia and the Valencian Regional Government through the Regional Ministry of Innovation, Trade, and Tourism, via EMENTI/2025/29.
