Ports and start-ups, love is in the water

Most of the world's leading ports have innovation hubs to nurture the growth of disruptive companies based on their needs and those of the industry (FP).

After several years of being viewed with some suspicion, the maritime sector is now getting used to the dynamics of start-ups. And vice versa. In fact, most of the world's leading ports have innovation hubs to nurture the growth of disruptive companies based on their needs and those of the industry.

As Matt Petersen, president and CEO of Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) expressed at the last Smart Ports: Piers of the future in Barcelona in the face of the numerous existing options, entrepreneurs should select the program that best fits their needs. “My advice to start-ups is, “be selective and strategically opportunistic, as 90% of projects fail,” he said.

Diverse innovation hub models

Those that do make it, don't make it overnight either: “How do we make sure they can scale? It takes time,” Petersen admitted, as many factors come into play. Maybe their technology isn't the right product for the market, but you also have to ask whether the founder is the best person to serve as CEO.

“Sometimes it happens that someone had a great idea, managed to raise the initial capital and prove that his or her solution was suitable. However, this same person is not always the best person to scale the company and lead the organization. This is something that often happens,” says the head of the Angelina incubator.

Cleantech, as its name suggests, is an incubator focused on sustainability-related topics such as clean energy, zero-emission mobility and circular economy that has 422 companies in its portfolio.

In the case of TheBeacon, its CEO explains that they are not simply an incubator or accelerator, but position themselves as a community, a broad ecosystem that includes the city of Antwerp, its port and university, as well as other organizations and institutions.

“We bring these partners together with start-ups, scale-ups and companies to bridge the gap. We make sure that all the people we need to launch a great project are just one phone call away. This is very important because the challenges are very complex and you need many specialists working together on the different challenges,” shared Inés Sylverans.

For Sylverans, companies and start-ups need each other, “although sometimes they are not aware of it”. However, if the scales have to be tipped, he believes that start-ups need companies more and that large corporations believe that it is not essential for their business to work with start-ups.

“Although I am not convinced that this is the case, as sometimes companies need fresh ideas or to rethink some business processes,” she notes.

In this sense, he pointed out that artificial intelligence cannot simply be implemented by handing the tool to workers, but that you have to teach how to implement it and have people with technological knowledge to help them use it effectively.

Start-up solutions

AI is precisely the technology used by several start-ups that attended the last edition of Smart Ports: Piers of the future.

This is the case of UTURN, a platform for bidirectional container transport. Shippers publish their transport needs, which carriers then assign to each other to send to the destination. At the moment, it operates in countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Germany. “We are a kind of Uber for inland container transport,” defines Casper Curvens, its business development manager.

They use AI and algorithm creation to help carriers and shippers improve their entire container flow. “Half of the people who work for us are in development, so we are constantly looking at what features we should add, what works, and what we can develop further. And AI is a big part of all this,” he shares.

The second disruptive company using the technology that is generating the most hype is the Centro Tecnológico Naval y del Mar, which, faced with the risks caused by floods associated with climate change, collaborates with fish farmers dedicated to the breeding of species such as sea bream, tuna, or sea bass, in monitoring the state of their marine facilities.

“Recent storms in the Mediterranean caused their facilities, which were not prepared for the magnitude of these storms, to break down. Entire fish farms literally ended up on the shoreline. This caused a lot of fish mortality and tremendous environmental damage, and although many of these fish survived, they entered the ecosystem, generating an impact,” describes Noelia Ortega, its CEO and director.

Their solution is based on monitoring these facilities with sensors connected through the internet, generating data that is then transferred to the cloud.

“We are providing information, predictive models and an immersive experience so that, through the glasses it is possible to move around the facility to see what is happening. We use artificial intelligence and machine learning because we are collecting data and learning so that engineers in submerged structures can develop solutions and recommendations,” she continues.

Seabots, on the other hand, uses marine drones for mapping, making three-dimensional models or digital twins of infrastructures, knowing the quality of the water or quantifying natural assets.

“Mapping the environment of a port infrastructure allows, for example, to know the degree of sedimentation, which is a major problem when navigating within a harbor. Also to see what state the breakwaters are in and to be able to carry out preventive maintenance,” says Pau Guasch, CEO of the company.

The start-up recently won the ICT-based Blue Economy Innovation Award in the framework of the Digital Innovation Awards in Catalonia.

“The seabot acts as a mobile sensor that generates these models and reduces human, material and economic risks and also allows you to offer a much more efficient service to your customers,” he says.

The latest example is Yes We Sail, an initiative of Dani Anglada, who lost his sight in an accident while working on board a merchant ship, which seeks to empower visually impaired people to sail dinghies autonomously and safely.

It is based on a technology that, explain Dani and Gerard Llorach, its CTO, completely novel. “It is innovative because there is no other type of navigation application that transmits acoustically. Dani had the idea, but it covers other needs such as those of a person who, for example, piloting a merchant ship, can put on a headset and perform other tasks at the same time,” explains Llorach.

Both define the challenge as enormous, since they have to create the product from scratch and for which there are no references since, they recall, 80% of the information we receive enters through sight, leaving the rest of the senses in a practically secondary place. The start-up has already presented Lady, the first Catalan skate adapted for the navigation of visually impaired people.

The boat, unique in the world, has a reinforced wooden structure, and the deck texture has been modified to provide more information, and has had the support of the America's Cup Sailing and, in particular, its CEO, Grant Dalton.

“We have managed to adapt the regatta regulations to be able to use this vessel and in February we will present ourselves to the Ports 4.0 call for proposals so that, if we are awarded it, we can get the funding to develop this innovative technology,” explains Anglada.

Identifying needs, the relationship between start-ups and the maritime-port sector

In the case of UTURN, the start-up is closely linked to the ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg, a fact that helped them, especially in their early days. “This helped us to land concepts and get in touch with stakeholders that have allowed us to grow and expand markets,” explains Curvens.

Having the opportunity to present their proposal at a forum such as Smart Port: Piers of the future is also another way to continue to grow, given the number of port communities present. “And listening to what they have to say and what their needs are can also generate new opportunities for us,” he concludes.

For her part, Noelia Ortega celebrates that Barcelona has positioned itself as the blue economy hub and shares that they collaborate with Barcelona Port Innovation, in addition to being part of BlueTechPort.

“In the end, it's about making things happen, and for that we need these supports. We also want to be part of it, to contribute and help,” she says.

Finally, Pau Guasch explains that interacting with ports is essential to understand their needs and have the possibility to test technologies and perform tests in their facilities. “Having feedback on whether we are offering the right solution and if it has commercial application to provide, in this case to the ports, a service, is a perfect combination for both”, defines the SEO of Seabots.

And before concluding, an interesting reflection from Matt Petersen, president and CEO of Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI): “It doesn't matter what happens in the future. Whoever the innovation survivors are, I hope they make our industry a better place. We need it.”