Around 200 representatives of companies and knowledge centers of the biotechnology, agri-food and biomass sectors will meet this Friday, November 22 at the Agrobiotech Innovation Fest, a biennial event that reaches its third edition with a completely renewed format and which will take place again in the Parque Tecnolóxico de Galicia-Tecnópole, in San Cibrao das Viñas (Ourense).
The meeting is part of the Agrobiotech Innovation Program, promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Emprego and Industry through the Axencia Galega de Innovación (GAIN) and Tecnópole. Through individualized training and advice actions, 11 companies throughout Galicia improved their capabilities to consolidate their business model thanks to this business acceleration program.
This Friday, these SMEs will showcase their innovative products throughout the day at their stands and give workshops to make them known in depth. Quality control of textile, food and biomedical products; Drug discovery, new approaches to cancer through liquid biopsy and obtaining biotoxins and algae extracts focus the proposals of companies in the biotechnology sector. In the case of agri-food SMEs, they will present solutions for hydroponic cultivation of vegetables, the manufacture of dairy products of high added value, the production of dehydrated food and the technology of sensory intelligence for tasting. With regard to biomass, new quality control systems of pellets, vegetable and nutraceutical sponges obtained from mushrooms grown on wood will star in their stands.
Knowledge and new ways of business
The event is designed to share knowledge about the latest trends and innovations in the three reference sectors, for which a large team of experts will present success stories and experiences on the development of innovative foods, biotechnology versus industrial innovation and circular economy In the round tables, which will be moderated by representatives of the Galician food and biotechnology clusters and the Axencia Galega da Industria Forestal (XERA) – dependent on the Xunta de Galicia -, reference companies such as Pascual, CAPSA, Biochemize will participate and Natac Group.
The afternoon session will focus on the so-called “dialectical combats”, in which representatives of companies in leadership positions will defend different approaches on current issues in pairs. Nueva Pescanova, FINSA, Cooperativas Lácteas Unidas (CLUN), Cafés Candelas, Galchimia, Quescrem, Bialactis, Ecoplas, Qubiotech and Real Conservera Española will face in five fights on innovation in large companies versus SMEs, financing through venture capital against that from business angels, internationalization versus consolidation in the local market, gourmet products versus functional foods and internal R&D or in collaboration between companies.
In order to favor direct contact, an agenda of bilateral meetings will be scheduled according to the interests of the participants.
Until November 15, the Ministry of Economy, Employment and Industry of the Xunta de Galicia keeps open the call for the second edition of the Business Factory Aero accelerator (BFAero), a pioneering initiative launched last year and which intends to provide shelter to newly created projects in the aeronautical sector, thus enhancing the commitment to the sector in Galicia. BFAero has the support of Indra and Babcock, two international reference companies that take part in the Civil UAVs Initiative, a program with which the Xunta wants to turn Galicia into one of attraction for the sector.
The projects selected to take part in BFAero may have access to more than 50 potential technology partners, in addition to benefiting from a complete program of training, advice and joint marketing actions for products and solutions at an international level.
For this, BFAero makes available to the participating projects, at no cost in most cases, an extensive catalog of advanced resources that enable an agile development of technological solutions in the field of aeronautics and unmanned vehicles.
As in the first edition, six new projects will be selectedthis year to capture innovative talent in the field of drones and unmanned vehicles; three for the incubation phase and three for the acceleration phase. Through these two modalities, BFAero will accompany the initiatives involved in overcoming the stages that projects born in this sector must face; from the earliest stages of ideation, to the most mature, where it is about consolidating a business model that produces recurring sales.
Incubation phase
Program aimed at startups, spin-offs and spin-outs and structured in two phases of 12 months each, with an intermediate evaluation, designed so that the participating companies can approach solutions in the defined thematic areas. This phase will focus on getting the projects to validate their value propositions and business models with the purchase and place themselves in a position to make first sales in the aeronautical and unmanned vehicles sector.
Acceleration phase
12-month support program aimed at newly created companies, with proven business models and sales made in aeronautical and unmanned vehicle purchases, that have proposals that fit with the established thematic areas and seek to achieve business models you consolidate and recurring.
Among the services and facilities available to BFAero projects, the direct and constant contact with experts in the sector, access to the facilities and equipment of the Civil UAVs Initiative at the CEL Foundation and the Rozas aerodrome, in Lugo, stand out , own office, and the possibility of receiving a complete training in all aspects that affect your business idea. The projects have technological advice and access to potential international clients. In addition, they may have Indra and Babcock UAVs for free and bonus flight hours. They will also have the option of obtaining pilot certification.
Economical support
BFAero is the accelerator of this sector with greater economic support in Europe. The projects admitted to the accelerator will have the economic support of the Xunta de Galicia. Specifically, they will have access to financing of up to 100,000 euros in fund lost in the incubation phase and up to 50,000 in the acceleration phase. Additionally, they will be eligible for financing in the form of INDRA loans (through Indradventures) of between 50,000 and 500,000 euros in incubation and without acceleration limit. In addition, in the acceleration phase they will have access to participatory loans of up to 250,000 euros from Xesgalicia.
In addition to the CEL Foundation, Indra or Babcock, other bodies of the Xunta, such as the Igape, and small and medium-sized companies relevant to their knowledge or their technologies, collaborating entities such as CTAG or the Galician Aeronautical Consortium and generators are added to BF Aero of knowledge, like Galician Universities.
In the Place of Nebra, in the municipality of Porto do Son, we find a small canning plant. Sotavento is a family business created in 2016 to make canned artisan. It is not a canning more. It has several characteristics that differentiate it from the rest of the ones we can find in Galicia. The first is that here you can have an artisan packaging and using products almost exclusively from your area. The second is that, having Galicia as a tradition of women working in the canneries, it is strange to be able to see them at the command posts. Conservas Sotavento is an exception, since the management of the company is composed entirely of women. Therefore, the project was supported by the GALP Sustainable Coast. The company’s management is composed of a graduate in business administration and management, and a business management specialist. The sisters Eva González Lojo and Maika Pereira Lojo, who since childhood saw at home as their parents packed all kinds of products to ensure their conservation, decided to bring that family knowledge to the market.
Eva and Maika’s mother had always dedicated herself to the world of fish: first as a saleswoman and then working in the canneries in the Portosín area. What she was doing in the cannery moved her a little to the house. Between her and her husband, they made homemade preserves with surplus fish that their friends took with their boats. To be able to enjoy them throughout the year, they put them in tin cans. Eva, while studying abroad, was sent preserves that she shared with her acquaintances and “everyone loved them and asked where they could buy.” From repeatedly listening to this message, Eva González did the final job of her degree about “how to set up a canning plant”. After talking with her family, they decided that this would not be left alone in the papers of the University and were encouraged to start this project.
Its pillars are: raw material of fish and shellfish acquired in its environment; glass containers for the consumer to have the opportunity to see the merchandise, and the design. The use of glass in preserves is not an arbitrary choice. “The glass allows us to show the product from the first moment, without having to wait to open it to see the content. We believe it is important to know what you are buying, what the food you are going to buy looks like. ” Eva tells that crafts are linked to glass. In the packaging processes, the products are placed inside the containers. The cans allow the use of packing machines, which helps to mechanize the process. On the other hand, the glass does not allow, nowadays, the use of machinery for canning. Therefore, this package requires the delicacy of artisan hands to place the pieces inside the package one by one.
It is a canning that works a very small volume. This allows raising quality levels and being very demanding with what they pack. “Every sardine that goes in our boats has passed 4 times through our hands. There is never a fish in disrepair. We work with a super fresh raw material, but even parts that are poorly treated, we reject them. “As it is an artisanal product, they no longer enter a large-scale market, but instead look for delicatessen stores, where because of the price level they no longer need to skimp. “If you start trying to save costs, the result shows the difference. We use an extra virgin olive oil, because where we are placed in the market, we don’t need to lower the sales amount”.
They have 14 specialties in their preserves that move between the traditional lines (sardine in olive oil, natural seaweed, razors …) and the most innovative (mussels with Sotavento sauce, octopus with garlic), in addition to a line that has just take out this year, smoked (smoked sardine or “xureliño”). Their fish carry the fishing label kilometer 0 MarGalaica, except for cod and cocochas.The presence of women in the management of the company in the world of canning is something that is very striking. The great Galician canneries have a century and a half of life. The canning sector always had a large volume of female labor. The fishermen worked and their women worked in the cannery. Currently, 80% of the work in the canneries is done by women, but this is not seen in the management and management positions. In fact, Eva González points out that “whenever we go to the fairs, we are surrounded by men”. In Conservas Sotavento there are no men working directly, although Eva admits that they have her father’s ideas always “very present”.
After almost 4 years since they started the project, they understand that it is going “slowly”, since it is a long-term company. They were achieving goals they consider incredible, such as entering the Gourmet Club of El Corte Inglés, because delicatessen stores are their place of sale. Christmas is when the best sales arrive, precisely because of this condition of exceptional consumer product. They recognize that the benefits are not yet very high, but the company’s philosophy is non-negotiable. “If we now start to put in sardine can of Morocco with sunflower oil, Sotavento would no longer exist. If things are changing, I think they can only be for the better, ”says the head of production of this cannery.
Proyectopía is a company located in Pontevedra, which is dedicated to projects and works related to architecture, culture and research. They claim, as the name implies, to bring utopia to reality. For that they seek to combine the best of conventional and modular construction. Their models are eco-efficient, that is to say, of near zero energy consumption, and of exclusive design.
After receiving in 2015 an aid from the Technological-Industrial Development Center for its innovative features, they got their main product. It consists of a modular construction system that allows a customized design adapted to the client, the plot, and the climate. They thus obtain eco-efficient homes that are transportable and easy to install without almost auxiliary means. “The homes we make, or are eco-efficient, or we are not interested in doing them. We make that very clear to our clients, ”says Carolina Meire, technical architect at Proyectopía. A conventional house of 200 square meters consumes about 3,120 euros per year. One of Proyectopía is approximately 325 euros a year, that is, 90% less.
In 2017, the Galician Innovation Axencia (Gain) granted them an aid from the Innovapeme program, co-financed under the FEDER Galicia Operational Program. The new challenge was the relocation of the market. They needed solutions that had facilitated communication with collaborating companies in construction, with customers and their interaction, and systems that allowed virtual experiences at a distance. What they got was a variant of their constructive system. This is aimed at expanding existing housing spaces, or creating housing for young people, small in size, but with a combinable and customizable design. This product can be sold through a virtual sales portal that they have already created and are about to launch.
In the blueprint they build the house in 3D. This allows to offer both internal and external perspectives. Here we find architecture 4.0 at prices that are around 1,000 euros per square meter, which include everything: project, licenses, construction management, housing execution, paperwork, bathrooms, electrical installations, kitchen … The client must sign a pre-contract delivering an amount small that is discounted from the final price of the house, and you can take a virtual walk through your house on a plot in three dimensions. The construction period, as they are reflected in the contract, is less than six months after obtaining the license.
The construction period, once the house is designed and the license obtained, is less than six months
Proyectopía does not offer a catalog. It never works with predesigned models. They create a project designed with and for each family, also taking into account the microclimatic study of each plot. In addition, Carolina Meire explains, “we take the best of prefabricated construction, which is now so fashionable, offering a closed price, turnkey. Until the client leaves with a smile, we are not calm”. Right now they have 50 projects underway. The first ecotourism villas of Galicia can be visited now, in a complex called Mardesía, which is located in A Lanzada (Rías Baixas). It consists of five villas that incorporate passive structures to reduce energy consumption. “We create buildings with almost zero consumption, with excellent environmental performance, low energy demand and that take full advantage of the microclimatic conditions of the plot.”
The car industry as a reference
The project design system is based on the automotive industry in terms of the precision of the assembly of its components. They can assemble the panels millimetrically, which are previously machined and numbered. Thus there are no human errors, no weather problems, or weather conditions, in addition to avoiding accidents or possible deviations. “We do not leave in the hands of an operator, who may have a bad day, the possibility of a bad execution and then have a lifetime in your home. Filtration is impossible, as happens in a car”, says the technical architect of Proyectopía.
This company also offers an after-sales service, which consists of the telematic monitoring of the home during the first year of use. This system allows to guarantee ideal conditions of hydrothermal comfort and low energy consumption. “We know if the client that lives in that house opens the windows too much or not. For the house to be eco-efficient, it must be used correctly ”. The life cycle of the Proyectopía houses is much greater than that of a house by catalog, and the interventions to be carried out are much cheaper than in a “conventional dwelling”. This is because its modular components can be quickly replaced, both those linked to the facilities (which are updated more frequently), and those linked to the structure.
Project of a self-construction kit
With regard to the research, they are working on a project that contains a transportable and self-sufficient light self-building eco-innovative kit at the destination, through the application of advanced rotational molding techniques. “We always work with aluminum and luxury materials, but this is intended for social housing in other markets such as Latin America,” says Carolina Meire. For that, what they want and increase the thermal capacity of materials they find in their destination: sand, water… In this project they work in a consortium with Rotogal and Parcero Installations. This system could be exportable to any part of the world. They would be mounted practically without skilled labor, and saved in auxiliary means in its construction. No quality or efficiency is lost due to the fact of being social housing.
The houses of the future can start on the roof
The COTaCERO project (steel + construction from zero quota) is a direct continuation of the doctoral thesis of the architect Víctor Hermo, who is the founder of Proyectopía. With it, a line of investigation for the execution of buildings in height from the ground level began. It is a technique that uses hydraulic jacks to allow reverse construction, starting with the roof, and as the different plants are hoisted, we build below (from the roof to the base, a method also known as top to bottom ). The COTaCERO project implemented the new procedure as a transfer, from a usual form of deposit construction, to the execution of housing. “In the project we finished the experimental phase with the execution of a scale model built from steel sheet, which was raised with hydraulic jacks of two meters length. In this project, the validity and advantages of the new system were demonstrated, but improvement options were also detected through the welding relief as an assembly process”, says Hermo.
From here, REVERSTOP (reversible + “top to bottom”) arises, where the priority is the reversibility and reuse of materials, being able to build buildings with a highly optimized process, which allows adding or removing plants from below, maintaining the upper floors. The system is exposed in two materials: steel and aluminum. And at the end of the experimental demonstration, a two-floor, full-scale building is built from the ground level with hydraulic jacks. “The system allows to execute buildings up to six stories high that are, of course, based on the repetition of plants, without auxiliary means and from the ground level. The advantages for the construction in height are evident: speed, security and improvements in the control and, consequently, in quality ”, points out the founder of Proyectopía. From then on, Hermo opens a new line of research related to modular construction and sustainability, in which he continues to work today, although he does not rule out returning at some point on top to bottom construction.
Industry 4.0 faces increasing challenges in terms of its protection. Ensuring only the physical safety of a factory is no longer enough. The security incidents that cause shutdowns in the manufacturing processes, the loss or leakage of information, or the regulatory and legal breach, which is increasingly complex in terms of information security, gave rise to the birth in 2017 from InprOTech, formerly called Inprosec Auto. In this short time of life it has already been selected by INCIBE (National Cybersecurity Institute) as one of the top 10 cybersecurity projects in Spain.
Statistics say that 50% of Galician companies have suffered a cyber attack in the last year, both in their office environment and in the factory. This percentage may be even higher, since in the factory it is often ignored that a malfunction may be caused by this fact. With the hacking tools that exist today, “even 14-year-old kids can paralyze entire cities in the United States, or compromise water purification plants. We are already talking about altering public health. With YouTube tutorials you can do a hacking, It is not necessary to be an expert, just to have the bad luck of being chosen as your objective “, explains Alejandro Alonso, chief of operations of InprOTech.
Statistics say that 50% of Galician companies have suffered a cyber attack in the last year
The origin of this company arises from its presentation in 2017 to an accelerator, BFAuto (Business Factory Auto), which drives the Galician Innovation Axencia (GAIN). They found needs in the automotive sector. There were many attacks on their systems, and they decided to mount a specific section. They took a new step when they learned that the automatisms for making cars are the same as for making wood, cans of canning …, then they wanted to target the entire industry 4.0. .
Its portfolio of services is divided into three areas. The first is the strategic security of customers, second the European and American cybersecurity regulations. The second area affects technical safety. In this sense they perform an intrusion test; on the one hand they attack the client systems as they had not been known, to try to obtain administration permits for the entire system: this is known as a black box attack. They also carry out the white box attack, in which they receive permits as they were a base employee of the company, thus trying to obtain complete control. “This is one of the most frequent attacks our clients suffer. The attack of insiders: disgruntled employees, who are going to be fired, or others who are careless and introduce infected USBs in the factory. The third area would be training and awareness. On the one hand, aimed at making managers aware of the importance that cybersecurity has for their company. In a second phase they try to teach good practices to employees.
InprOTech, in collaboration with Gradiant and Checkpoint, is introducing a new product called Inprotech Guardian. It is a device that can be connected to the devices of the factory and, without being intrusive, listens to what happens on the network (types of communications between machines, network protocols …). Perform a vulnerability analysis. “The product covers needs that we have identified among customers, there are certain security holes between what companies think and that there really is. They offer active protection, not just an interface to view alerts, which is a plus. We accompany them in the analysis of alerts and vulnerabilities of their systems, as well as in the protection of cyber attacks. We are one of the few that offer a parallel service. ” The product is under development with pilots in companies, and this version will develop different modules and artificial intelligence. With this innovation, InprOTech immediately expects to grow 50% in its turnover and 100% in the coming years.
Cyber attacks with ‘bailouts’ up to 200,000 euros
According to Alejandro Alonso, the most common cyber attacks suffered by Galician companies are ransomware attacks, in which they directly hijack all the devices of a factory and ask for a rescue to recover them. The reaction time is crucial there. That’s why they want a system that analyzes network traffic in real time. “If you react within two weeks of a ransomware, when it goes viral, it’s too late; isolating that equipment prevents it from spreading throughout the manufacturing chain. ”
These cases are increasingly common in Galicia, so the director of operations of InprOTech understands that the mentality in Galician companies has to change. “We cannot ask for protection after suffering a cyber attack and having losses.” Just as there is already a lot of awareness in the prevention of occupational hazards, in physical security and in the perimeter, and security services are hired for these aspects, he understands that companies must learn to invest in the most important safety, which are The means of production. “You hire a person to watch the factory, but you don’t see the need to protect the true value of your company, which is in your business process. We are working on that awareness and on teaching how easy it is for you to stop the business, and the profitability that you get, because just stopping a cyberattack would already be amortized. ”
There is a tradition of thinking that you have your factory protected because you have nothing connected. Due to market and technology requirements, factories have had to connect. Meanwhile, in the IT office environment, the systems were advancing with antivirus…, in factories they have obsolete systems such as a WindowsXP and had to access the Internet directly. They were not prepared to overcome the attacks for those who were prepared in the offices. Simply by having the systems in a private network, they can stop your manufacturing. A hospital, trains, a smart-city, can be paralyzed by attacks. Alejandro Alonso set the example of a Galician company that resorted to its services. “It was a company in the automotive sector where the system was kidnapped. They were asking for 70,000 euros. When this happens, they call us, but there you can do little, unless you have backup copies. They had to pay the costs of a five-day plant shutdown, plus the costs of recovering the systems”. Other cases that know of this type of blackmail were around 200,000 euros from the request of hackers to the company.
The client is the one who decides whether to notify the police in these cases, but “they do not have the capacity to solve the problem. Our function is to act as cops, and also help them psychologically to overcome that blow, ”says the chief of operations of InprOTech, which ensures that they always recommend not paying, just as the police do in a kidnapping. That the payment is made does not guarantee that they will give you the key to decrypt your system. In addition, these payments are made in cryptocurrencies, and it can happen that the rescue that one day is 60,000 euros, two days later it costs 70,000.
The problem does not end there. It can happen, in the case of giving in to blackmail and making the payment, that you enter a blacklist and end up becoming what is known as an APT (persistent attack over time), that is, receive an attack already much more personalized. If someone is responsible for analyzing emails, company processes, among other things, can make a more specific attack and demand much more money, because “they know that these people are willing to pay”. Now companies work from mobile phones, tablets, manage electronic invoices … there is more and more monitoring and there are no paper files as there were before. For all this, from InprOTech they warn that, “80% of the value of a company is your means of production and not to protect it is to play with fire”.
Costa Vella Industrial Estate, in Santiago de Compostela, hosted this Tuesday the presentation of the first call of BioIncubaTech, the new accelerator for the biotechnology sector in Galicia. The initiative, to which proposals can be submitted until November 15, will encourage the creation of technology-based companies, and will offer support for those initiatives that need to improve and innovate their processes in this area, especially in the health and health sectors. food technologies
Bioincubatech is led by the University of Santiago de Compostela, through the Valuation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship area, co-financed by the INCYDE Foundation within the ERDF program, and by the Galician Innovation Agency (GAIN). The Chamber of Commerce of Santiago and Uninova also collaborate. It is the first bioincubator in Galicia and the only one in Spain specialized in health and in the agri-food sector. It is, therefore, a unique project in the Iberian Peninsula to attract entrepreneurial talent and research results from around the world to Galicia.
In order to facilitate the growth of the participating projects, this new accelerator will offer a centralized infrastructure, with high capacities based on services of high added value, which, with a capable team and with great experience both in the scientific / technological field and in the business, provides a set of coordinated services for business acceleration.
Bioincubatech will advise the initiatives selected in the different stages of development
Each of the initiatives selected in the different stages of development (pre-incubation, incubation or acceleration) will be able to access a specific work program in which specific needs and characteristics will be taken into account. Thus, they will have available work spaces, advice on technology transfer, financing, business model, internationalization or communication.
In the act, chaired by the rector of the USC, Antonio López, participated the director of the Galician Agency of Innovation (GAIN), Patricia Argerey Vilar; the mayor of Santiago, Xosé Sánchez Bugallo; the director of FEDER projects at the INCYDE Foundation, Natalia Vázquez, and the second vice president of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce, José Carballo García.
Patricia Argerey explained that this incubator is one of the milestones of the Galician Biotechnology Boosting Strategy, launched in 2016, and ending in 2020, whose objectives and execution have already been achieved almost 100%. “I trust that BioIncubaTech will be able to attract the best business projects to Galicia and have the possibility of consolidating and growing in Galicia, making our biotechnology sector even stronger and placing the European scale better,” Argerey said.
In addition, Bioincubatech contributes to strengthening the entrepreneurship support ecosystem in Galicia, increasing the offer of infrastructures and incubation and acceleration services in the biotechnology sector, and integrating into the StartInGalicia platform that encompasses all of the entrepreneurship support services of the Consellería de Economía, Emprego e Industria. Patricia Argerey also stressed that the creation of this high-capacity centralized infrastructure, which offers high value-added services, provides new capabilities to the biotechnology business fabric, thus increasing its ability to compete internationally.
In this sense, the incubator joins the work that is already being done in the sector with clusters such as Bioga, Clusaga and Health, also involved in this project. As Argerey stressed, the field of biotechnology constitutes “a priority sector” for the Xunta de Galicia, and thus place Galicia as a key international player in the biotechnological value chain. In addition to this initiative, the Xunta de Galicia supports other entrepreneurship and acceleration programs in this field such as Business Factory Food, focused on the food industry, Agrobiotech Innovation, focused on biotechnology, agri-food and biomass, or the Early Discovery Incubator Drugs of the Kaertor and Janssen Foundation.
This company was born from the laboratory of the Submarine Research Center. The laboratory team, with its entire department, separated in 2012 to create what is now INDROPS. They carry out environmental consulting and fundamentally analysis of all types of water: waste, consumption, marine waters, pool … They also analyze soil sediments, waste, and to a lesser extent, food. Their central laboratory is in Santiago de Compostela, but they also have a delegation in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. They are currently part of the Agrobiotechacceleration program, which promotes sustainable growth of Galician innovative SMEs in the biotechnology, food, agriculture and biomass sectors, and promoted by the Galician Innovation Agency (GAIN) and Galicia Technology Park-Tecnópole.
Its main clients are public administrations, private companies and also private clients that need to analyze the water from a domestic water well, or neighborhood waterways. At present they are the only private company that can provide in Galicia bioassays, marine sediments, to comply with the dredging materials guidelines. They are accredited by ENACfor water analysis and sampling. Right now they are over ten thousand annual samples.
INDROPS Lab.
In general terms, the waters of Galicia are of very good quality and are subject to continuous controls. The control of drinking water is very strict and there are very defined protocols to act and even cut off the supply in case there is a risk to the population supplied. The river waters suffer more alterations in their quality since they are usually the recipients of the different discharges of the industries and of the different population centers. The control over discharges is also continuous, although it is more complex than in drinking water and poses a risk to the quality of water that is spread throughout the territory, wherever there is human activity. “One of the main factors in the quality of drinking water is the composition of the soil, we are in areas where there is a greater concentration of metals such as aluminum or arsenic, the treatments to be made are more complex to be suitable for consumption” says Miguel González, general director of INDROPS. Water quality can also get worse in a timely manner when there is a drought, but it is known that there are areas in Galicia that have metals in the soil, despite the fact that the director of INDROPS states that “we should not create unnecessary alarms since the competent authorities always act so that the supplied water meets the sanitary requirements”. The one that does recommend, for those who are interested in knowing how good the water in their area is, is to enter the SINAC page, where the water quality of any town hall appears, even at the historical level.
The waters of the marine environment also have a very good level of control and quality. The problem is that there are sewage treatment plants, both industrial and urban, that are designed to eliminate only compounds of organic matter or microbiological contamination, but in the last three decades they are going through a series of waste that is not eliminated in this type of treatment plant . We are talking, for example, about residues of medicines, cosmetics, drugs… “The current treatment plants do not suppress these products that are reaching our estuaries. Thus we are detecting that there are marine species that are being affected in their reproduction and survival. Possibilities are being investigated to try to improve the disappearance of our waters from these pollutants”, explains Miguel González.
The SEALAB project
Currently there is a European regulation that sets priority substances: metals, pesticides, aromatic hydrocarbons … These pose a risk to the environment and human health. Other harmful substances, such as drug or drug waste, are not included in this list, because “the regulations are quite slow compared to the reality of everyday life.” In the case of Galicia, the levels of these priority substances in the waters of our environment are being controlled. Since debugging systems are not the ones to debug them, it is very difficult to get improvements. The solution to the problem would be to reduce the emission of these pollutants.
With this objective, INDROPS is developing a project that consists of a sensor that detects these priority substances in real time. Currently, the methods of analysis are not the ones to detect the levels requested by the legislation. The partners of this project called Sealab are already advancing in the development of a laboratory with an innovative sampling and management system that incorporates nanosensors for four of these substances, in addition to measuring other auxiliary parameters (oxygen, temperature, conductivity or turbidity).
The portable laboratory of priority substances, designed by the company INDROPS Laboratorio together with INL (International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory), will incorporate the unmanned light marine vehicle of easy take-off in which the company Industrias Ferri is working with the collaboration of the Unit of Marine Technologies of Cetmar. The boat will have a double propulsion system that will have one motor for the transfer to the sampling point and electric motors that reduce the risk of contamination in the maneuvers in the control area and that late-night developed by CETMAR. The operating system of all the elements integrated in the boat, in addition to communications and teleoperations, are being developed by the company Imatia Innovation. This company is also responsible for the design of a platform that will manage all the information related to both water samples and navigation, sending it in real time to the base, which can act early according to the data transmitted on the existence of priority substances or other parameters.
Once all these works have been completed, their operation will be validated in real conditions. According to the deadlines for those responsible for the Sealab project, which began in 2018, the tests to verify the operation of the portable laboratory will be carried out in real conditions at sea in September 2020. The SEALAB project is co-financed by GAIN (Axencia Galega de Innovation), Ministry of Economy, Emprego and Industry of the Xunta de Galicia and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the CONECTA PEME 2018 call.
INDROPS is developing a sensor that detects priority substances in real time
Research in constant motion
There are more research groups from the University of Santiago de Compostela that are looking to eliminate these types of compounds. The problem is that these vary constantly. “Every day there are new medications, pesticides, cosmetics… so it is an ongoing challenge. This search is going to be one not stop. At best in ten years we are able to purify what is harmful today, but then the one that pollutes has already changed, ”says the director general of INDROPS.
In INDROPS they had already carried out ambitious projects in 2018. The Ramica Project consisted of a robotic monitoring system for microbiological analysis of water quality, and in the Sabius project they developed a sensor that allowed microbiological analysis of pollutants from bathing waters In INDROPS they intend to achieve new business paths and consolidation of the current business, which can offer them sustainability over time.
Muutechsounds like something that has to do with the sound a cow makes. And although little work with this almost sacred animal in Galicia, the idea of these three partners, of which two are telecommunications engineers and an industrial engineer, had initially emerged talking about the possibility of remotely controlling a farm. When they took a step towards professionalization, they detected a need in the industrial world to apply proven technologies to improve production processes with monitoring. They created a unified platform dedicated to collecting real-time data from multiple sources, whether from a server, from machines, robots…, regardless of their origin.
From there, they “do the magic”, as one of their partners, Óscar González, CMO of Muutech, explains. Real-time data analysis, anomaly detection, organization of data in dashboards visually and easily, so that companies do not drown in data and information. This sums up what Muutech does. This small company was established two years ago, and now has its headquarters in the business center of Porto do Molle in Nigrán after starting to participate in the BFAuto accelerator, driven by the Galician Innovation Agency and Vigo Free Zone Consortium.
Muutech’s idea arose from the need to remotely control a farm
The idea was that, both in the production processes of an industry, and in the systems part of a company, there may be a control carried out by Muutech. Even if we talk about a pen manufacturer, in the end they have servers, and a telecommunications infrastructure. Muutech’s job is to anticipate the possibility of a stop in a production process, or predict an anomaly to save costs. They are able to detect a bottleneck in production, or a temperature rise in a machine. All this can be done from the mobile phone. The Muutech application connects directly to the machines, and once it has the information, it transfers the data easily to the client, either through a text message, or even a whatsapp.
With respect to other companies in the sector, their contribution consists of something more than the installation of the digital platform. They connect the worlds of IT with those of production. “Now more than ever it is necessary to have everything interrelated on the same platform. Many companies have several sources of information, but do not communicate with each other. Or you have a person dedicated all day to do an ‘Excel’ with the data, which implies a high expense, and the possibility of making mistakes, or you can do it with us, which above all we make a platform that allows us to unify data”, says González.
Its platform is based on open source, which gives them stability and speed. In this way the client avoids paying licenses. They use the customized Zabbix monitoring system as the main tool, and their mission is the collection and visualization of data from various sources: automatons, sensors, databases, servers, communications equipment … All this can be completed with a sensor ecosystem and IoT actuators, which allow positioning in remote places, difficult to access or that are in motion. It also integrates other useful applications, both free software and own development.
Stops that cost millions of euros
One of Muutech’s goals is to minimize the stops that cost money. But these problems do not get rid of large companies. An example that we can show is what happened to Amazon, which was five hours down because an engineer entered a command erroneously. This led to losses of one million dollars per minute, and in those hours there were more than 300 million dollars left on the road. “To avoid events like this, you have to anticipate the problems, and have a tool that solves you when they happen. The difficulty is that small businesses are not able to start a project like this on their own, they don’t find it or added value. It’s not about investing a thousand euros and knowing that you’re going to save five thousand. You get control to avoid difficulties, and reduce costs if they appear. Normally entrepreneurs think more about direct return. They prefer to invest in a machine that gives them 50 cans of canned more per minute, than in something that brings them closer or controls the entire factory”.
Customers variety
We can place your customers in two sectors: industry on the one hand, and communications infrastructure on the other. The initial vocation of the company was to focus its project towards the almost 200,000 SMEs in Galicia, but they finally concluded that large companies have less qualms about making this investment than small ones, which have a harder time appreciating indirect benefits. The growth they are looking for now to open the market is to leave Galicia. “From Vigo we can work for the world. We just need to access the company’s servers. ” The idea they have is to grow little by little in Spain, and in the short and medium term, settle in the big business centers of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or northern Portugal.
Muutech monitoring is infinitely applicable, but perhaps that variety can become a problem at the same time. Now Muutech tries to focus his work in the metal, automotive, food and telecommunications industries. With RTVE they work on a dashboard project in the IT branch. Also with a chain of perfumeries, a bakery or ship telecommunications companies, such as Syntelix. These industries now have automatic systems for the introduction of information, when before it was done manually, more expensive and susceptible to errors.
IN 2019 Muutech has been present at 4YFN, which is considered to be the two most important start-up events in the world, forming part of the Mobile World Congress (MWC). It presents innovative ideas and disruptive companies in the field of new technologies. They also had a presence not Olé Startup of Salamanca, or in Germany in the Hannover Messe, and recently in Vigo, in the Mindtech and in Conxemar.
When Daveigastarted in 2006, its owners could not imagine everything that came after. Its Mariñeiras cookies fight with the most innovative companies in Europe on the list drawn up each year by the Financial Times, a classification that includes companies based in Europe that experienced faster growth. This study, prepared by the prestigious British newspaper in collaboration with Statista, lists the 1,000 European companies with the highest growth rate in recent years. It highlights the entities that act as the driving force of the European economy. In 2018, in Daveiga they obtained the 503 position, then 548, with an accumulated growth in the analyzed four-year period of 315%. In 2020 they expect to have a presence again in this list dominated by entities from the technology, construction and services sector, with headquarters in countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and France mainly. “It is just a ranking, but it brought us visibility. The merit is not so much to appear on this list, but as a bakery in rural Galicia is there”, says Xosé Lois Llamazares, the coordinator of Daveiga.
Xosé Lois Llamazares, head of Daveiga.
It is a monoproduct company, the Galletas Mariñeiras, but with many varieties within it. At the present time they produce about 5,000 kilos a day, which means about 26,000 bags, with more than one million kilos of annual production. Until 2009 it was a modest project. They had no positioning in the store. With the crisis they had to endure the pull. And already in 2013 is where the exponential growth begins. Daveiga went from having five employees, to today form a team of almost 70 people. Its business model is linked to the social economy. Workers have the option of being partners of the company. “Everyone who is stable, which is about 54, has that possibility, 35 of them are partners. This is a labor society. The promoter group continues to control the project, ”says Xosé Lois. The company is also part of InnovaPeme, the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain) program, which boosts the competitiveness of SMEs by supporting their innovation plans aligned with the priorities of the Galician Smart Specialization Strategy, RIS3.
Daveiga, family business
The Llamazares family is made up of six brothers, and they are all in Daveiga. Three were promoters and the other three joined as financial partners. The project began with Xosé Lois, general coordinator, along with two of his brothers. Óscar was a appliances’ keeper, Carlos worked in a metal warehouse, and Xosé Lois was a local development technician. None of them had experience with bread. The idea came when they visited a brother who is a baker in Argentina. “We come that it was a product that could have a lot of acceptance in Spain. He made a similar product in Buenos Aires. At that time we wanted to leave our jobs in Vigo and Pontevedra to return to Rodeiro, the village where we are from. We thought about working with livestock, but suddenly the cookies came up”. They studied the possibility, and decided to start doing the Mariñeiras. The market perceived this as an innovative idea, when what it does is pick up a tradition. In Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Cuba or North America there was already something similar in dry bread. There they called him Mariñeiras. Then the Llamazares discovered that the name came from the ships that in the fifteenth century departed from the peninsula towards America. The origin was Spanish.
Recovering a recipe six centuries later
Boat bread or boat sponge cake was the way sailors found to preserve bread naturally. It is an old recipe now reformulated. Seafood biscuits are defined as a long-lasting dry bread and that is where their main characteristic lies in getting them to taste bread for a long time. This cookie has a resistance for the consumption of eight months almost without alteration, although “we have some samples that are two years old and are edible”, says the coordinator of Daveiga. It is a product that due to the characteristic of dry bread, with hardly any moisture, almost does not suffer alteration. “A cookie like maria type, if you leave it overnight outside the box, it will get soften”. Mariñeiras are called cookies by the way, but they are not sweet. They serve for breakfast or as snack. Bread without crumb had a good reception from the beginning. Its manufacturing process is similar to that of bread in the fermented dough.
Bet on local development
They try to achieve this objective from two fundamental areas: the first is to give a character to the labor-intensive production process; the second, in which the raw materials are transformed or produced in the closest environment. This is the reason why they use wheat from the country by 30%. They also look for butter to be local, in addition to using extra virgin oil. As several seaweed producers found in Galicia, they make a variety with them, specifically with wakame.
In Daveiga they consider that organic production is the one that can offer more guarantees to the consumer from the point of view of health. In 2007 they obtained the ecological certification. That was an absolute novelty. “We demand that the raw materials do not contain additives, and we do not incorporate them either”, says its coordinator. Precisely for this reason they are selling a lot in Portugal, where they have become a very popular product in the line of healthy foods. From this country they took the idea of also incorporating chia or quinoa seeds. Another trend that has just been positioned this year is spelled wheat for people with wheat intolerance in the country. As for their internationalization, they think in the long term in the rest of the European Union.
Daveiga has received countless awards since the beginning of his career, both for its quality and for business growth and the social model. “What we like is to see that Daveiga showed that, with an alternative model, there is feasibility. If it is not for him, we would not have overcome the crisis. In the social part there is still a long way to go for our mode”, recalls Xosé Lois Llamazares. With this objective they are launching a program aimed at secondary and university education, to try to boost the rural from the perspective of social economy, sustainability and innovation.
The facilities of the Orember factory, owned by Finsa, in the industrial area of San Cibrao das Viñas (Ourense), hosted the presentation of the Fibraticproject, in which the timber company participates together with the Galician Supercomputing Center (Cesga) and the CiTIUS of Santiago of Compostela. The goal of this initiative, which will be developed over the next five years, is to automatize the production of several industrial processes that until now were difficult to control, framed in the Industry 4.0 strategy that drives the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain).
This second phase of the project, which gives continuity to the joint work developed in the last two and a half years between the three entities. During this time, the researchers of CiTIUS and Cesga, in collaboration with the timber company, sought a technological solution to the extent that they could improve the quality of their products, taking advantage of the enormous amount of data generated during the manufacture of the Medium Density Fiber (MDF), used in the construction of modern furniture. As a result of this collaboration, already validated at the Orember plant, a new contract was signed that will last until 2024, and that will maintain the scientific activity in Cesga and Citius.
The signing of the agreement will allow to go deeper in the use of high-performance Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Computing technologies at the factory, putting them at the service of all the manufacturing processes necessary to obtain the quality product demanded by customers. Industry 4.0 is already a reality, which will be decisive over the coming years in all types of sectors.
Galician companies, as is the case of Finsa, are immersed in a process of technological transformation that advances unstoppable, establishing formulas that preserve their ability to compete in the purchased. The alliance model between Finsa, Cesga and CiTIUS, is committed to an interdisciplinary team that brings together business, technology and academy to, through knowledge and capacity, and with a ground-level involvement, be able to work on real processes and products.
The act with which Fibratic has been launched, which included a visit to the Orember facilities, was attended by Patricia Argerey Villar, director of the Galician Innovation Agency of the Xunta de Galicia (GAIN), Mauro Fernández Dabouza (director of Cesga), and Senén Barro (scientific director of CiTIUS), together with scientists David Mera, Andrés Gómez and Santiago Recamán. These three researchers developed since 2017, within the framework of Fibratic, several investigations that have been published in journals such as Electronics.
Queres recibir o noso boletín diario coas noticias de Gciencia?
Utilizamos cookies para asegurar que damos a mellor experiencia ao usuario no noso sitio web. Se continúa utilizando este sitio asumiremos que está de acordo.Estou de acordoNonPrivacy policy
Únete á nosa canle de Whatsapp
