Jesús Freire, president of Freire Shipyard, was honored, together with Pedro Garaygordobil, president of Astilleros Zamakona Yards, at the 1st Conference on Technological Innovation of the Sociedad para el Estudio de los Recursos Marítimos (Soermar). This act also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the SOERMAR Foundation, taking a tour of its history and talking about the future of the sector.
Both businessmen received the recognition for the “exceptional merits at the service of the naval sector and for a lifetime of dedication, highlighting their support for the development of technique and technology in their shipyards, promoting projects of a markedly innovative nature“.
The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, represented by the Director General of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Galo Gutiérrez-Monzonís, was also honored at the event.
In the forum, Eva Novoa, director of Soermar, opened the session by taking stock of the entity’s activity and speaking about the need to take advantage of the opportunity that European funds represent for the sector, an idea also shared by the president of this entity Marcos Freire.
The president of Soermar, and director-general of Freire Shipyard, also communicated in his speech the intention to give continuity to these conferences, which are an “opportunity to exchange knowledge on innovation“. Marcos Freire also emphasized the importance of the knowledge and experience in R&D&i accumulated in Soermar’s 20-year history, which is “at the service of the entire naval and maritime industry“. “Today all industrial sectors are immersed in the digital transformation that will lead us to Industry 4.0, there is no sector that does not adapt to it if it wants to survive“, reiterated the president of Soermar.
“We are a team, a family that, with a lot of effort, has had great successes,” said technical director Alfonso Carneros. In the twenty years of this entity, 389 national and European projects were carried out, with funding of nearly 95 million euros in subsidies and private investment that exceeded 352 million euros.
The event was closed by the mayor of Vigo, Abel Caballero, who stressed the idea that this sector must continue to have “consistency, power, strength and competitive capacity“, since “it has to be the future of this land” . And he highlighted the importance of the work of businessman Jesús Freire in the city of Vigo. “Times go by, but the Freire family is a way of understanding this city,” he concludes.
The Vigo Technological Innovation Conference was held at the Mar de Vigo museum and received more than a hundred representatives from the shipbuilding industry.
