Generating a shared vision on the current situation of the Port of Alicante, its main challenges, opportunities and innovation priorities, incorporating the perspective of the different agents of the logistics-port community was the objective of the reflection and diagnosis workshop for the Innovation Strategy of the Port Authority of Alicante, in which the director of the Smart Ports Chair, Francisco Toledo, participated as a keynote speaker, to contribute his experience and vision and help ensure that the future innovation strategy responds effectively to the needs and expectations of the port ecosystem.
In an environment of accelerated transformation, innovation has become the definitive strategic lever to respond to the challenges facing the Spanish port system with a horizon of 2030. “Beyond optimizing efficiency, safety and sustainability, innovating today is an indispensable condition for our ports to adapt to a dynamic and highly competitive global market,” assured the director of the Chair during his speech at the workshop, held at the PortLab of the Port Authority of Alicante.
The meeting addressed the main trends in port innovation. These, according to Toledo, are concentrated in “three great waves.” The first is intelligent automation (digital twins, AI, massive sensorization through IoT) and data as an asset “as valuable as the port land itself.” The second is the energy transition and the blue economy; and the third, hyperconnectivity and open ecosystems.
In this regard, Toledo stated that “the trend of open innovation seems tailor-made for Alicante. The challenge is to connect those two worlds: the dock and the byte.”
For his part, the president of the Port Authority of Alicante, Luis Rodríguez, highlighted in the institutional opening of the workshop that “the high participation and the level of commitment demonstrated by the port community show that we are building a solid, shared and results-oriented innovation strategy. Innovation, sustainability and digitalization are not only strategic axes, but realities that are already driving the growth of the Port of Alicante.”
During the meeting, emphasis was placed on the fact that the Strategic Framework of the port system entrusts Port Authorities with assuming a proactive role as catalysts of open innovation.
This implies strengthening ties and joining efforts with the business fabric, the logistics-technology sector and, very especially, with the academic sphere.
Therefore, as Toledo stated, “only through this shared collaboration will we be able to consolidate port facilities as true logistics intelligence nodes, benchmarks in energy transition and generators of value for their environment”.
In his opinion, “the Port of Alicante has an extraordinary opportunity to consolidate its role as an economic engine of the territory, to become a benchmark in areas related to sustainability, smart logistics, digitalization and the blue economy and, above all, to build its own innovation model, aligned with the needs and strengths of Alicante and its environment”.
In this regard, the director of the Smart Chair outlined the key role of the Port of Alicante in the region’s innovation ecosystem, “as corroborated by the numerous innovation projects in which it has participated through the Ports 4.0 Fund and the fact that, in the last call, it promoted 21% of the projects submitted at the national level”.
Likewise, Toledo also highlighted the Smart Port Alicante Project, a strategic initiative of the Port Authority aimed at transforming the port into a smart, sustainable and interoperable logistics node, whose purpose is to accelerate in an integrated manner the digital, energy, operational and environmental transformation.
“Technological trends change every year. Today it is generative AI, tomorrow it will be quantum computing, but the culture of innovation is what remains. Therefore, the objective of the Port of Alicante must be to prepare the organization, port companies and institutions to be flexible, permeable to change, to ‘coopetition’ and brave when trying new things”, said Francisco Toledo at the close of the meeting.
