The Secretary General for Research and Innovation visits the company Titanium Aero in Aerópolis, dedicated to innovation and continuous improvement for the aeronautical and automobile sector
The Secretary General for Research and Innovation, Antonio Posadas, has visited the engineering company Titanium Aero at Aerópolis, dedicated to innovation and continuous improvement for the aeronautical and automobile sector, and informed about the competitive call for aid worth 59 million euros with which the Regional Ministry of University, Research and Innovation will support business and technological innovation in Andalusia. The bases containing the characteristics and requirements for the call for these innovation incentives will be published shortly.
Posadas has pointed out that the largest amount of these programs, which will be funded by FEDER funds from the 2021-2027 financing framework, corresponds to the 22.6 million euros planned to consolidate the activity of the technological centers through two lines of action: the development of innovation projects and equipment, to which another amount of 15 million is added for business innovation projects in the sustainable aviation sector. In addition, 11.4 million have been reserved to call for aid to companies that launch industrial research or experimental development projects in Andalusia aimed at offering innovative technological solutions to administrations, companies and citizens in general and another ten million to finance both growth and consolidation actions and innovation projects executed by innovation clusters.
The Secretary General for Research and Innovation has thus highlighted that Andalusia is a benchmark for the aerospace sector at a European level, and has valued the support of the Junta to this segment, “one of the most powerful in the regional economy and with the greatest capacity to promote the transformation towards a productive model based on knowledge”. “It is an activity on the rise with a present and a future full of opportunities”, he has reiterated. In this sense, he has recalled that this sector generates 14,000 jobs in the community, represents 1.2 points of the regional GDP and, in addition, currently invoices almost three times more than fifteen years ago, generates twice as much employment as a decade ago and leads the ranking of Andalusian exports.
Furthermore, Antonio Posadas has outlined the various lines of work that are carried out by the Regional Ministry in this activity, such as the ‘Space Innova Andalucía’ programme, which will have at least 20 million in incentives from FEDER Funds. This initiative seeks to identify innovative technological solutions in the space sector to apply them in areas of activity managed by the regional Administration related to emergency response, fire fighting, environmental management or statistical and cartographic analysis. The action will be carried out through the Public Procurement of Innovation (CPI) formula, which means that the initial amount could be increased by 14.6 million more, since a request for that amount has been made to the Line for the Promotion of Innovation from Demand (FID Line) for the Public Procurement of Innovation, which is supported by FEDER Funds and is coordinated through the Ministry of Science.
Likewise, he has pointed out the Centre for Innovation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Urban Air Mobility of Seville (CUAM, for its acronym in English), which with a global budget of 20 million from the Andalusia 2021-2027 FEDER Programme, is jointly promoted with the University of Seville, an institution to which a subsidy of nine million will be transferred in 2025 for its start-up. He has also referred to the 17 million euros with which his department has supported the Centre for Testing, Training and Assembly of Unmanned Aircraft (CEUS), located in Moguer (Huelva), and to which the Junta will allocate a sum of 100,000 euros in the next financial year for the joint management that it maintains with the Ministry of Defence.
The Regional Ministry is also finalising the agreement with the Seville City Council and the Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) that will include the creation of the incubator for entrepreneurial companies in space matters of the European Space Agency (ESA), which will have a total of 160,000 euros for its start-up in 2025.
Apart from this support, the Regional Government is also implementing the Andalusian Aerospace Strategy and supports the professional qualification of human resources dedicated to this activity through the future academic programming of public universities, which includes training aimed at this type of profile, reinforcing the offer in engineering. In the case of the aerospace sector, three new master’s degrees are included, one at the University of Granada and two at the University of Seville.
