Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal, Oct. 30, 2024 (Lusa) — The president of the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N) said on Wednesday that Vila Nova de Cerveira, in the district of Viana do Castelo, had "great potential" for development, namely through investment in a business innovation centre.
"We're talking about a territory with great potential. It has a strong industrial fabric and is one of the municipalities in the country with the highest per capita exports. It is located in the Alto Minho cross-border cluster, where there is a flourishing economy. And it has a very special situation, linked to culture and the arts [due to the International Art Biennale], which can create a logic of attractiveness and quality of life that can make a difference," said the president of the CCDR-N, António Cunha.
He was speaking during the corporate conference "Innovation, Sustainability and the Circular Economy", organised by the municipality to promote the Innovation Centre. This project already has four founding companies developing innovation projects and a nucleus of the Polymer Engineering Innovation Pole (PIEP) of the University of Minho, based in Guimarães.
António Cunha also highlighted the municipality's 8,000 inhabitants and Cerveira's "path that seems appropriate" in creating the Innovation Centre, which is to start from the "existing critical mass", namely PIEP.
"Creating innovation structures outside the major centres and the anchorage of universities has its difficulties. But one of the success factors is to build on existing centres, as Cerveira is doing," he said.
The president of the CCDR-N emphasised that attracting people is "the great challenge facing Vila Nova de Cerveira and most of Europe's cities", pointing out that more factors weigh on this process than workers' pay rate.
He said the stakes are "quality of life, cultural factors, the environment, or the social and urban metabolism."
"Before, here we were at the end because there was a border [with Spain]. Today we're in the middle, because next door is a sister country," he remarked.
For the director general of COTEC Portugal, Jorge Portugal, "the future is really in the making in Vila Nova de Cerveira" due to the investment in the innovation centre and its "interesting territorial capital."
"What attracts investment, companies, and people are infrastructures - education and mobility. On the other hand, housing has become a problem of national competitiveness in all municipalities," said the head of the Business Association for Innovation.
He added that the "second factor of territorial competitiveness is the link between companies and knowledge, through university research centres" and the third is "the interaction of the companies themselves."
The mayor of Vila Nova de Cerveira told Lusa on Tuesday that the municipality will have a Business Innovation Centre by the end of the year and a Business and Coworking Centre by 2025, in an investment of over €1 million.
"We want to be a benchmark in research and development. Data from the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission places Vila Nova de Cerveira as the 15th most exporting municipality in the Northern region out of 86 municipalities. We now want to attract investment and specialised human resources," explained Rui Teixeira.
The innovation centre should occupy the space allocated to it in the former Galaecia school building by the end of the year. This building is currently undergoing "adaptation work" that costs around €100,000.
He said the Business and Coworking Centre, which represents a one-million-euro municipal investment, is scheduled for completion in May 2025.
ACG/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
