Blue Impact Ports Accelerator Network

The Blue Impact Ports Accelerator Network will capitalise the results achieved by the Atlantic Smart Ports Blue Acceleration Network (Aspban), financed by the EMFF. The project will build a small-medium size ports network covering all EU Sea Basins, EEA Norway and Iceland, Extra-EU Canada, Israel and Tunisia, that will work as a coordinated open innovation platform for upscaling, deployment and replication of digital and green solutions that transform ports into blue economy hubs: by capacitating ports to host new blue businesses in blue emerging sectors; by capacitating ports to innovate their operations by incrreasing operational efficiency and positive environmental impact; achieving these goals by replicating and upscaling early stage and growth tech solutions, in order to build an investable pipeline of projects by the private sector (investment funds and banks). The project will consist in the following phases: Phase 1 - consolidate the ports network for replicating and upscaling the 28 startups pilots identified in Aspban; associate a private investor(s) pledge(s) to each pilot; Phase 2 - implement the pilots in ports; Phase 3 - evaluate impact of pilots implementation and materialize private investors pledges in startups. The Blue Impact Ports Accelerator Network is mainly composed by blue clusters, in order to guarantee a quadruple helix ecosystem approach in the project. It also involves CPMR for mobilizing regions and AIVP mobilizes ports communities.