These initiatives choose to be part of the high-tech incubator of the Cádiz Free Zone during the third call for project recruitment
They are innovative and technology-based projects from sectors related to the Blue Economy applied to areas such as aquaculture, port security systems, education for sustainability, communication and artistic production, and water management.
The selected initiatives will begin incubation from February and will have the full support of Telefónica's team of mentors, who will develop a personalized work plan for their promotion, growth and consolidation.
Incubazul has 80% co-financing from the European FEDER Funds within the 2014-2020 Operational Program, A way of making Europe, through the INCYDE Foundation
The incubator opens a new period for attracting projects for the May 2023 call
Thirty-eight new projects have registered to join the Blue Economy technology incubator, Incubazul, through its third call and thus enter the comprehensive acceleration program, opened by the Cádiz Free Zone, with the support of Telefónica and its Open Future platform.
All of them intend to join the ecosystem of the technological incubator of the Zona Base project and in which 23 projects that accessed the accelerator in the two previous calls are already working. In the Cádiz Free Zone incubator, they are accompanied to consolidate business initiatives linked to the sea and its natural resources.
These innovative ideas choose to join Incubazul, coming mostly from the province of Cádiz, but also from different places in Andalusia and the rest of Spain, and present concepts and services with a technological base of application in the multiple subsectors covered by the Economy. Blue: aquaculture, fishing, recreational navigation and ports, coastal protection, biotechnology or desalination, among many others.
The new entry window entails a pre-selection of projects in accordance with the bases of the call, which covers everything that makes the oceans and their sustainability a habitat in which to implement projects that result in economic and social development.
Of all the applications submitted, a pre-selection is carried out in accordance with the rules of the call and those that pass the first screening have to defend their project before an Evaluation Committee, made up of experts in entrepreneurship and the Blue Economy. Those that are selected in this process will be proposed to be part of the initiative.
Once the projects have been evaluated and approved by the aforementioned committee, the selected projects will begin incubation in mid-February, which will last for 4 months in which, with the added value of tutoring and mentoring from the Telefónica team, they will lay the foundations. and they will work on the construction of the business idea.
Incubazul has 80% co-financing from the European FEDER Funds within the 2014-2020 Operational Program, A way of making Europe, through the INCYDE Foundation
The State delegate in the Cádiz Free Trade Zone, Fran González, has assured that “the Cádiz incubator already acts as an important focus of attraction for innovative business ideas. In this way, Incubazul is turning Cádiz into a national, and even European, benchmark for the Blue Economy, which gives prominence to the oceans and seas as an economic source and efficient and sustainable resource management”.
After these first three incubation periods (BATCH), other windows will open for the arrival of projects in the incubator. Initiatives interested in being incubated at Incubazul can access information on Telefónica's Open Future enabled platform through the website www.openfuture.org and on Incubazul's own website, whose address is www.incubazul.es.
Twenty-three ongoing projects
The new business initiatives will be added to the 23 that are already underway and that were already housed in the Incubator. All of them represent technology-based concepts and services that can be applied in the multiple subsectors covered by the Blue Economy: from the creation of tuna leather through a vegetable tanning process; certification of marine biology courses within the framework of recreational diving; the development of smart catamarans for autonomous navigation and ocean data collection; a platform to give greater prominence to women working in the blue economy; going through the manufacture of ecological and sustainable surfboards from plastics collected from the coast, or the eco-design of sustainable packaging through the valuation of a waste such as macroalgae collected from the shores of the beaches.
In the Incubazul ecosystem, incubated companies can access services such as incubation spaces, with physical accommodation at the Incubazul headquarters, or remotely, in individual or shared offices (coworking), the laboratory, and meeting and training rooms. Also a complete training and mentoring program, in charge of Telefónica and support for internationalization. And on the other hand to a networking program, advice on access to financing and support to facilitate research.
With Incubazul, the Cadiz Free Trade Zone implements a project that aims to be a benchmark in the Blue Economy throughout Spain and in which circumstances are conducive to attracting and promoting talent and ideas with the oceans and seas as the main focus.
This High Technology Incubator Project for the promotion of innovation and technology transfer to microSMEs in the blue economy sector in Andalusia “[BlueEcoIncuba x Logistical]Tech = ZONA BASE – INCUBAZUL 2.0” is 80% financed by the European Regional Development Fund within the Pluriregional Operational Program of Spain FEDER 2014-2020 OP. “A way of making Europe” within axis 3: Improving the Competitiveness of SMEs, Thematic Objective 3 Improving the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, and investment priority 3 Promotion of entrepreneurship, in particular, facilitating the economic exploitation of new ideas, and promoting the creation of new companies, also through incubators.”
