VALENCIA. 2/12/21.- The second call of the Ports 4.0 Fund will be presented on 13 December at 5 p.m. at the headquarters of the Innsomnia Hub in the Marina of Valencia. The open innovation programme will be launched in order to capture ideas and projects in commercial phase that digitalise the Spanish ports under the competence of Puertos del Estado.

The Ports 4.0 Fund, promoted by all the Spanish port authorities and Puertos del Estado, is the largest public project for the digital transformation of a sector launched so far by the Spanish administrations. The Fund will allocate 6.75 million euros to this call, with grants of 15,000 euros per selected idea (750,000 euros in total) and the remaining 6 million euros for grants of between 100,000 and 2 million euros per project in the commercial phase, those that are on the verge of being launched on the market.

The Ports 4.0 Fund was launched in 2020 in a firm commitment to innovation on the part of the ports with the aim that both the ports and the logistics chain continue to gain competitiveness. To this end, the programme is looking for startups and technology companies that propose real disruptive solutions to the port challenges of the 21st century.

And after the success and quality of the projects presented in the first call in which more than 300 candidatures from all over the world were presented for 120 million euros, Puertos del Estado has launched its second call for ideas and commercial projects in which the total budget of the subsidies has been increased by 50%, so that the ideas will receive a total of 750,000 euros, with the possibility of up to 50 subsidised proposals, and 6 million euros that will be used to subsidise commercial projects.

“The aim of this new call for proposals is to facilitate the technological maturity of the different projects presented and to bring technological products to the market,” emphasises José Llorca, head of innovation at Puertos del Estado.

First call

The launch of this second call for ideas and commercial projects coincides with the end of the first call in the third category, that of pre-commercial projects, whose selected projects will be announced in the next few days.

In the first call for ideas, 33 applications were selected, each receiving 15,000 euros. The ports with the most support for selected applications were Bilbao with 6 of them, Valencia with 4 and Barcelona in the intra-entrepreneurship category with 2 ideas. In the case of the commercial projects, those with the largest endowment of up to 2 million euros per project, 9 were awarded and Barcelona and Las Palmas stand out with 3 projects supported each and Valencia with 2.

The day will begin with the presentation of the second call for proposals. Then, the Port of Valencia, through its Director of Innovation Strategy and Planning, Juan Manuel Díez, will explain the areas in which the port authority is looking for projects to develop in its installations, as well as all the benefits that this will bring for the beneficiaries. Finally, Díez will talk to the members of the technical office of the KPMG-Innsomnia joint venture: Rafael Navarro, Guillermo Fernández, Borja Torres and Juan Fernando Delgado, who will analyse the selection process, the results of the first call and will guide the applicants for the second call.

The conference will take place on 13 December from 17h to 19h at Innsomnia as part of its Forum: “Opportunities of digitalisation”, within the framework of the Valencia Digital Summit 2021 week. Programme and registration
The event is part of the Spanish Economic Forum and is sponsored by Valencia Activa and Valencia City Council.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)