Logroño, (EFE).- The First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, said this Saturday that there are already 25 projects led by companies from La Rioja that have received funds for more than 15 million euros within the strategic projects of the recovery plan.
Calviño has appeared in Logroño together with the president of the Government of La Rioja, Concha Andreu, to analyze some of the transformation projects that are being developed in the community and the execution of European funds.
He underlined that, thanks to Andreu’s leadership, La Rioja is one of the autonomous communities that has received the most European funds per capita, not only for the direct management of autonomy, but also for its participation in calls promoted by the State, with more than 2,700 beneficiaries in the region.
In relation to the digital kit, he specified that more than 1,700 SMEs and companies from La Rioja have already received digitization funds to “be able to transform their businesses and get on the new digital economy.”
He has also cited 36 million euros that are invested in irrigation modernization, which is essential in a community with such a large weight in the agri-food sector; and companies from La Rioja are also participating in the strategic project for digitizing the water cycle to improve the efficiency of water resource management.
In addition, he added, La Rioja companies participate in six other strategic projects, such as the connected electric vehicle, cutting-edge health, the modernization of the agri-food chain, the aerospace PERTE, the renewable energy, green hydrogen and energy storage and the new language economy, which is one of the emblems of the recovery plan for La Rioja.
Collaboration between autonomies
On the other hand, the community of La Rioja has said that it leads two of the three RETECH (Territorial Networks of Technological Specialization) projects in which it participates, aimed at creating innovation networks that bring together various communities, which focus on digital twins, the agri-food platform in network and the interconnected network of entrepreneurship.
“They are transformative projects, in which this region collaborates with other autonomies to promote the technological transformation of the country”, he highlighted,
Regarding the Valley of Language, he has indicated that it is “an extraordinary opportunity for the country and La Rioja, through the new economy of the language”, thanks to the asset that Spain has: Spanish, a language spoken by almost 600 million of people in the world.
For this, he added, 44 million euros have already been mobilized (20 from his ministry and another 24 from the Government of La Rioja) to promote the development of the Global Spanish Observatory; and the Valley of Science, with the incorporation of Dialnet as a global platform.
In this sense, Andreu recalled that the oral corpus of Spanish will also be built within this framework, essential for natural language processing and artificial intelligence.
He has pointed out that Dialnet will evolve to become Dialnet Global, with the integration of the Hercules project, and pioneering training will be promoted for professionals required by the new language economy, such as the Master’s Degree in Language Processing and the Degree in Computational Linguistics that It has already been launched with the University of La Rioja.
National Packaging Center
On the other hand, he pointed out that the future National Center for Packaging and Packaging Technologies, which will be located in Calahorra from 2025, will respond to 15 projects already proposed by companies in the aluminum, plastic, paper and wood, whose “solution is underway through a call”.
The head of the regional Executive has explained that in this region four of the five packaging sectors are present: aluminum, plastic, paper and wood, glass would be missing; of which “there are companies of all kinds, international and their own”, which have transferred their needs to the Government of La Rioja.
He has specified that among these approaches are “how to empty the aluminum containers in which the pre-packages come so that no remains remain inside, how to make the vacuum complete and how to order a warehouse by quality in a digitized manner”.
“We are in contact with all the companies to work with them on possible investments and to get everything ready so that, when this Center is ready, we can introduce ourselves and solve it”, he specified.
He has pointed out how “an important part that will be put into operation when the National Center for Packaging and Packaging Technologies is built will be the task of, once a new container has been designed, putting it into production imitating the chain of any industrial company ”.
In addition, the President of the Government of La Rioja has highlighted how “the good work of the Executive of Spain has allowed this autonomous community to execute European funds like never before”, since 327 million euros of “Next Generation” funds have been assigned to it. and 64.6 million euros from REACT EU funds.
