Maritime transport and Spanish ports share innovation and trends at Smart Ports Forum 2022

PortCastelló has participated in the Smart Ports Forum sectoral meeting organized by the Executive Forum, and which has also had representatives from Puertos del Estado, the ports of Algeciras, Valencia, Barcelona and Huelva, and the companies Siemens, Nokia, Prodevelop, GMV , Signify and the Spanish Transport Association (AET) and Eurotech.

The head of the Blue Growth Department of PortCastelló, María José Rubio, has highlighted the digital transformation process promoted by the Port Authority of Castellón “to become a SmartPort”. Along these lines, she explained that this transformation is based on seven fundamental dimensions: technology, strategy, processes, customers, products and services, information and people.

The plan is part of the strategic lines of the Port Authority of Castellón and has an investment of 607,500 euros and an execution period of three years.

This forum has made it possible to value PortCastelló’s strategy in terms of digital transformation “to adapt to the processes and trends that the port sector is experiencing, to be more competitive, offer better services to our Port Community and implement more efficient work spaces and flexible”.

The conference was made up of two blocks of participants, moderated and introduced by Juan Manuel Martínez, vice president of the AET. In the first, Manuel Arana, Director of Planning and Development of State Ports, presented the strategic lines of the new Strategic Framework for the Spanish port system. Arana also mentioned the three calls for the Puerto 4.0 Fund, highlighting that it is an “adopted model of corporate open innovation to attract, support and facilitate the application of talent and entrepreneurship to the Spanish public and private logistics-port sector”.

Jesús Medina, head of the Technological Development Area of the Port Authority of the Bay of Algeciras, has pointed out that digitization continues to be a key factor in the transformation of the port logistics sector. In this context, he has referred to the “digital ambition” with which the port of Algeciras faces its evolution process to be a Smart Port, as well as the importance of the human factor to successfully carry out this transformation.

Next, Fernando Torres, Senior Customer Success Manager at Iberia Siemens, and Raúl Salinas, Director of Vertical Ports at Siemens Smart Infrastructure Spain, have indicated that the improvement of energy efficiency and the digital transformation of port infrastructures are two determining factors for the development of current maritime transport.

On behalf of the Port Authority of Valencia, its head of Planning, Strategy and Innovation, Juan Manuel Díez Orejas, has also referred to the importance of energy efficiency as a fundamental aspect for the development of smart ports.

Jaume Figureras, technical director for Companies in Spain and Portugal at Nokia, explained how digitization and private wireless networks are a key factor in driving growth and optimizing operations in port management. In this way, he has added that the smartest port will be the one that uses this digitization to boost its growth and gain market share worldwide. The second block of the Smart Ports Forum began with a presentation by Carles Rua, Head of Innovation at the Port of Barcelona, in which he explained the new paradigm of digitization in which current ports are integrated. In this sense, he has presented the fourth Strategic Plan of the Port of Barcelona 2021-2025, which marks the line that this port follows to become the “smartest logistics hub in the Mediterranean”.

For his part, Pepe Ferri, partner and director of Business Development at Prodevelop, referred to the importance of developing “new generation collaborative ports”. Among the reflections that he has shared, Ferri has emphasized the possibility of taking advantage of SaaS (‘software as a service’) to speed up deadlines and mitigate risks in port digitization processes.

Manuel Francisco Martínez, head of the Technology Department of the Huelva Port Authority, commented on the initiatives that are being developed to meet the ultimate goal of becoming a “technological innovation node”, that is, in a “physical and to cover all the stages of technological innovation in the field of port operations”.

Manuel Gómez Langley, Business Partners SPD- GMV Critical Infrastructures, presented the Data Spaces (PET) for the logistics-port sector, based on which the company works to offer its digital solutions. As stated, the Data Space developed and proposed by GMV consists of an ecosystem where various actors not only share data, but also share the use of their data voluntarily and safely.

Finally, Igor Soto, a member of the Public Sector Marketing Department at Signify, presented the company’s contribution to the smart port sector from “Smart lighting”.