• The objective of this project in 2022 is the definition and implementation of the acceleration and incubation programme, the laboratory and the financial instrument that will complete the R&D&I and training activities developed by Fundación Valenciaport.

• Today was held the ordinary meeting of the board of trustees of Fundación Valenciaport in which its general director, Antonio Torregrosa, informed the attendees of the cruising speed that the entity continues to maintain, having participated in a total of 46 innovation projects during 2021″.

Valencia – 25.11.21. This morning, Fundación Valenciaport held the ordinary meeting of its Board of Trustees to approve the action plan and the budgets for the 2022 financial year, with the planned level of activity amounting to 6,264,012 euros.

In the director’s report, Antonio Torregrosa highlighted the cruising speed that the entity continues to maintain in terms of innovation projects, having coordinated or participated in a total of 46 projects in this category during 2021. Specifically, these include twenty-two Horizon 2020 programme projects, nine CEF projects, five Interreg-MED projects, two ENI CBCMED projects, two EIT Climate-KIC projects, one Erasmus + project, one EIT Digital project, one Pleamar Programme project (FEMP), and four projects funded by the Valencian Innovation Agency (AVI), three of them approved in the second half of 2021: VIGÍA, ASIGNAT and HUB Valenciaport, which Torregrosa explained in detail to the board of trustees.

The VIGÍA project – Surveillance through vision and artificial intelligence in industrial areas, is an initiative of the Working Group “Access control to the port, terminals and warehouses”, of the Innovation Committee of the Valenciaport Cluster, whose objective is the development of a federated platform, based on blockchain and artificial vision, for the integral control of access to different industrial areas of the Valencian Community. The ASIGNAT project – Architecture of digital twins and machine learning services for planning in land transport of goods, aims to design and develop tools that allow better decision-making in the operation of land transport of goods in port supply chains. Finally, the Valenciaport Open Innovation HUB project aims to design and formalise an open innovation and knowledge system that brings together all the initiatives aimed at promoting innovation, entrepreneurship and training in the Valenciaport cluster, facilitating coordination and cooperation between the different agents in the system. This AVI project has contributed to the creation of the Port of Valencia’s Innovation HUB, an initiative of the Port Authority of Valencia which will be led by Fundación Valenciaport and which will kick off next January. According to Torregrosa, the year 2022 will represent a qualitative leap in the development of this HUB as it will involve the launch of its own acceleration and incubation programme, as well as an intensification of the Valenciaport Living Lab concept, extending it to specific laboratories with their own facilities as required. Likewise, the design and launch of an innovation financing instrument is also envisaged, which will enable the cluster’s financial resources to be channelled towards start-ups and entrepreneurs. Thus, the objective of this project in 2022 is the definition and implementation of the acceleration and incubation programme, the laboratory and the financial instrument that will complete the R&D&I and training activities developed by Fundación Valenciaport.

In the international sphere, the director highlighted the recent award of the technical collaboration “Implementation, start-up and support of the services associated with the logistics system of Valparaiso” in which Fundación Valenciaport and Infoport Valencia will support Indra in the development of a technological solution that resolves the logistics information needs of the port community of Valparaiso, defining the new Baseline and Optional services in its PCS; as well as the collaboration with NTT Data in the technical support for the preparation of the National Customs Single Window in Cyprus and the improvement of the organisation and operational control of customs in Belgium.

With regard to the Training area, the director highlighted the recent launch of the University Expert Programme in Innovation and Digitalisation of the port logistics sector, an initiative that has the backing of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and is co-directed by the latter, INNDUX Digital Group and the Valenciaport Foundation. Torregrosa also informed the Board of Trustees of the recent start of the 1st edition of the Master in Logistics and Port Management in Mexico (in blended format) and the 30th edition of the Master in Port Management and Intermodal Transport in Valencia, which has a renewed programme with digital transformation and ecological transition as protagonists. He also expressed his satisfaction with the success of the “Companies and port, committed to VET” conference, an event held the previous week in which the progress made in the pioneering VET Dual Port Immersion programme was shared with the port community, as well as the results of the “Study of the professional profiles required by companies in the port community of Valencia”, carried out within the framework of the YEP MED project, and the constitution of the Training and Employment Observatory of the Valencian Port Cluster was also announced.

Finally, the director, as has become traditional, has specified in figures the great benefit for the port logistics cluster as a whole of the work carried out by the team of Fundación Valenciaport, highlighting the 50 million euros of budget promoted during 2021 by the Foundation for the development of European projects, 46.2 of which as direct funding for the cluster, for the implementation of improvements and innovations in infrastructure and technology in their areas of activity.