Aerópolis hosted more than 70 participants in the IX edition of the International Meeting “Dual Use Technologies 2024” under the theme “Space and Economic Transformation”
Andalucía TRADE has organized for the ninth consecutive year the International Meeting Dual Use Technologies 2024, which in this edition, held at the Aerópolis Aerospace Technology Park, has hosted more than 70 participants, on “Space and Economic Transformation. During the inauguration, the general director of Andalucía TRADE, Antonio Castro, highlighted the importance of these technologies in which civil and military use are compatible to boost the space industry in Andalusia, an emerging sector “but very well positioned to achieve higher levels of growth and representation at the national and international levels”.
Castro, who was accompanied by the Secretary General for Research and Innovation, Antonio Miguel Posadas, highlighted the strength of the Defence sector in Andalusia, where the southern corridor of the Industrial Defence Strategy is located, “a strip of land where the naval hub of the Bay of Cadiz, the aeronautical hub of Seville-Cadiz, the Atlas Centres (Villacarrillo) and CEUS (Huelva), the Army Logistics Base in Cordoba and Cetedex in Jaen come together”.
“Also, Andalusia stands out as a strategic and environmental enclave for the space sector due to its favourable climate, with high-level infrastructures such as the Calar Alto observatories in Almeria and Sierra Nevada in Granada” he indicated. “Almost 200 entities have experience in the sector, including companies, associations and research groups, although only 7% of the turnover of the Andalusian aerospace sector (not counting the leading company Airbus) comes from this sector and there are 7 companies whose main activity is space” he added.
Despite this, Castro highlighted “two transcendental milestones for the industry that positioned Andalusia in the national and European space industry”: the start of the activity of the Spanish Space Agency in Seville and the successful launch of the first private Spanish rocket from the Arenosillo facilities by the Alicante company PLD Space. “They are not the result of chance, he continued, since we have been working for years to generate a solid ecosystem to face the challenges posed by the space industry: infrastructure, companies, climatic and geographical conditions and knowledge.”
In this sense, the head of TRADE pointed out some results that demonstrate a new scenario: “in the period January-August 2024, the Andalusian space industry has exported 23.28 million euros, practically the same as in all of 2023 and exceeding what was exported in 2022 (2023 closed with exports worth 24.88 million euros and 2022 with 23.18 million euros).”
“In this context, he concluded, the holding of an international meeting on Dual Technologies, as we have been organizing since 2015, is more valuable than ever, generating a dynamic defense industry ecosystem by bringing together SMEs and large companies, research and innovation organizations, technology centers, universities, to collaborate, and in which a wide variety of topics and sectors have been addressed, including smart specialization strategies (RIS3), the aeronautical sector, synergies between the different funds involved, the field of cybersecurity, as well as advanced manufacturing applied to the naval industry, among others.”
Dual Use Technologies
Dual Use Technologies is an international meeting on dual technologies that the Andalusian Government has been holding since 2015 with the collaboration of the European Commission through the Directorate General of Defense Industry and Space (DG DEFIS) and the Network of Defense-Related Regions (ENDR), as well as the Ministry of Defense through its Directorate General of Armament and Material. This collaboration has been fundamental to promote dual-use technologies from Andalusia in an international context, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and the creation of synergies between different regions and entities.
A key element that characterizes this event, except for the virtual edition of 2020 due to the pandemic, is the organization of B2B meetings at an international level. These meetings, framed within the Enterprise Europe Network, promote networking and improve cooperation between companies, research groups and clusters at a European level around dual-use technologies.
