Valencia – 14.05.2021. A new session of the Valenciaport Cluster Innovation Committee took place yesterday afternoon at the SuperLabPorts facilities, with the participation of Sallar Faridi, Director of Plug and Play Hamburg and Donald Baan, Business Development Director of Portbase (Port of Rotterdam), as guest speakers.
During the meeting, which was led by the Director of Innovation and Cluster Development of Fundación Valenciaport, Salvador Furió, a review of the evolution of the four working groups that are currently underway within the framework of the Innovation Committee was made: “Integral traceability of containers and equipment”, “Control of access to the port, terminals and inland warehouses”; “Planning and Optimisation of Maritime-Port Operations” and “Evolution towards a zero emissions operating model”.
The methodology chosen to update the Innovation Plan of the Port of Valencia Logistics Community was then presented, a task which will be undertaken from September and which is expected to be completed in January 2022. The updating process will begin with a review of the trends of the current roadmap of the innovation plan and then validate with the representatives of the companies the new strategic lines to be followed. From this list, the trends that generate the greatest interest will be prioritised and selected and a new document will be generated, which will again be reviewed and approved by the members of the Committee.
Next, the initiatives that will be launched in 2021 within the framework of the Innovation Committee were presented, including the holding of informative webinars on funding opportunities for innovative initiatives in the port logistics sector or the implementation of a system of challenges open to startups through which the companies of the Innovation Committee will be able to present problems that can be solved by startups with the aim of obtaining innovative and creative solutions that improve performance and sustainability in the Port of Valencia. Similarly, a mechanism will also be set up to collect and analyse initiatives proposed by startups.
The meeting concluded with a round table on Open Innovation, where Salvador Furió, Sallar Faridi and Donald Baan discussed how to manage innovation ecosystems in ports and which acceleration and entrepreneurship programmes are proving most successful in the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Valencia. In this respect, the members of the Innovation Committee expressed their interest in continuing to boost open innovation as a key element for achieving competitive improvements and attracting talent.
R+D+i Plan of the Port of Valencia Logistics Community
It should be remembered that the Innovation Committee came about as a result of the development and implementation of the R&D&I Plan for the Port of Valencia Logistics Community, an initiative led by Fundación Valenciaport and supported by the Port Authority of Valencia (PAV) and Agència Valenciana de la Innovació (AVI).
This project was developed as a strategic tool for the promotion of the innovation priorities of the companies that make up the Valenciaport port community, identifying and analysing the most relevant trends that will condition competitiveness in the sector and proposing lines of action in R&D&I oriented towards the challenges posed in the short, medium and long term. For the development of the plan, work was carried out with the different groups that make up the cluster, as well as with relevant agents of the Valencian science and technology system, subsequently creating the Innovation Committee as the governing body in charge of giving continuity to what was achieved in 2018 by monitoring the progress of the different lines of innovation.
