The Maritime-Marine Cluster of Andalusia (CMMA) promotes, with the II Blueminds-Networking Meeting between research groups and companies in the sector, held this Thursday at the Innovation Marketplace from the Port of Huelva.
All this has been developed within the framework of the Atlazul project, of which it is a partner and which is led by the General Secretariat for Foreign Action of the Junta de Andalucía, the connection between researchers and blue firms in order to increase productivity and employability among young Andalusians, that is to say, it is about them having a job opportunity in the professions linked to the sea.
In the event, organized by the CMMA, Atlazul and the General Secretariat for Foreign Action, the Port of Huelva, the University of Huelva, the Innovation Market and the Campus of International Excellence of the Sea (CEI MAR) have collaborated, have More than sixty representatives of maritime-marine companies and research groups from both public institutions and Andalusian and Portuguese universities participated.
The president of the CMMA, Javier Noriega, the coordinator of CEI MAR, Darío Bernal Casasola, the director of the Port Authority of Huelva, Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio, and the president of the Huelva Federation of Entrepreneurs (FOE) participated in the inauguration. , Jose Luis Garcia-Palacios.
“We want to promote the connection between researchers and blue firms, in order to increase productivity and employability in the maritime-marine sectors among young Andalusians”, explained Noriega.
“That is why we go to the research groups, from the company, to know the catalog of resources that they offer us, to know what they are investigating, to establish ways of full cooperation between the business and research sectors of Andalusia, with the in order to make blue firms better and, above all, so that they welcome young researchers from Andalusia; to make the training needs of the most thriving business sectors of the Blue Economy known”.
In the same way, this will make it possible to seek alliances in order to carry out projects of excellence in the areas of the subsectors of the Andalusian blue economy: logistics, ports and infrastructures, fishing and aquaculture, industry and shipbuilding, biotechnology, Blue Tourism, archeology. submarine, desalination or R+D+i”.
Andalusia, leader in Blue Economy around the sea
The president of the CMMA has stressed the need to “configure Andalusia as a leading territory in terms of Blue Economy in Southern Europe through the necessary approach to knowledge, and include it in the productive sector, as the most powerful clusters in the world do, such as those of North Germany (North Germany Maritime Cluster), the French Pôle Mer or the transfer of existing knowledge in port cities such as Hamburg, Rotterdam Singapore or Southampton.
The Port of Huelva, added the president of the CMMA, is among the five with the highest volume of port traffic in Spain and its location represents a strategic enclave as an import/export port and hub for new trends in international maritime trade. “It is a true benchmark as an energy port area and in the traffic of liquid and solid bulk”, he indicated.
Noriega has highlighted the fishing and aquaculture power of Huelva, and has pointed out that the CMMA already organized the Spain-Portugal Cross-border Technical Conference on innovation in fishing and aquaculture companies, which hosted the Huelva capital on April 1, 2022 (the headquarters of the FOE, specifically).
After the inauguration, the table ‘Energy, Blue Technology, Ports and Fisheries as business vectors in the Andalusian Atlantic’ took place, moderated by the Director of Transfer of the University of Huelva, Reyes Sánchez Herrera, and in which the coordinator of the KTTSeaDrones project, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Estrada, the CTO of the Huelva Port Authority, Manuel Francisco Martínez, the director of the Innovation Market, Rocío Díaz Pereira and the president of the Huelva West Coast Fisheries Development Association (GALP Costaluz), Francisco Martínez Faneca.
There have also been 45 minutes for a coffee-networking, in which researchers and businessmen have been able to exchange experiences, knowledge and reflections, and each one of the representatives of both the blue business sector and the research groups have exposed for three minutes their objectives, goals and ongoing projects. It should be remembered that the CMMA already organized an I Blueminds-Networking within the framework of the Atlazul project that took place in Cádiz, on November 29, during the celebration of InnovAzul.
Atlazul Project
Atlazul is a project of a strategic nature, led by the General Secretariat for Foreign Action of the Ministry of the Presidency, Public Administration and Interior of the Junta de Andalucía, which has a total of 18 partner entities in its partnership (11 Spanish and 7 Portuguese), coming from Alentejo, Algarve, Andalusia and Galicia.
The project called “Impulse of the Atlantic Coast Alliance for Blue Growth”, Atlazul, code 0755_ATLAZUL_6_E, on economy and blue growth, has been approved in the 4th Call of the Cross-Border Cooperation Operational Program Interreg VA Spain Portugal, POCTEP, (2014- 2020). It has a budget of €5,548,504.00 and is 75% co-financed with FEDER through the aforementioned Program.
