• 13 companies and entities participate with a total budget of more than €750,000

The Agrupaciones Empresariales Innovadoras (AEI) are subsidy lines aimed at stimulating the generation of collaborative projects for accredited cluster companies, with the aim of impacting the leadership of digital transformation, promoting Industry 4.0, post-covid recovery and the efficiency in the use of material and energy resources for the ecological transition. Next, we present the 4 projects with a favorable resolution of the 2nd call of the AEI of the year 2021:

FIAD - For intelligent additive manufacturing in the production process

The project that has obtained the highest score of those presented by the entity -and of the best scored of the entire call- has been the FIAD, which develops "Intelligent Additive Manufacturing on Demand". The collaborative project will facilitate the integration of additive manufacturing technology (with 3D printing technology) in the productive information flow. The consortium is led by different leading agents of advanced printing in Spain, such as the start-up ADDvance Manufacturing Technologies and the Leitat Technology Center. In addition, it also has the companies TAI Smart Factory and Gráficas Larrad for the integration of software and printing. The project is carried out jointly with the AEI Functional Print. The project has a budget of €197,257, of which €150,290 is supported by public aid from the aid program.

IntelFoodPack 2.0 - Intelligent digital platform with market data from the agri-food and packaging sector

The second approved project is entitled IntelFoodPack 2.0, a project for the operational deployment of a competitive intelligence system for the Agrifood and Packaging Sector. It is the implementation of an intelligent digital platform that obtains recurring market information for the agri-food and packaging sectors at an international level. It is an intercluster project between the food sector and the packaging sector, a collaboration project where different links of the value chain of the two sectors can be seen represented. The project is coordinated by the Clúster Food+i Association, and the technology-based company Idiogram, the technical consultancy specialized in packaging RepaQ and the Packaging Cluster participate. The project budget amounts to €80,300 and has received a grant of €48,181.

MARIO - Artificial Intelligence for fault detection and repair 

The title of the following subsidized project is MARIO, in reference to: “Intelligent Maintenance and Repairs in Operations”. The project proposes the use of artificial intelligence in the detection and segmentation of breakdowns, repair classification, response time prediction and prioritization of incidents to be resolved. Three SMEs have participated in this project; the company specialized in the manufacture of Saplex garbage bags, the Dribia data science innovation studio and TAI Smart Factory, a company specialized in the capture, management, monitoring and analysis of data through its software tools. This project has been endowed with a budget of €106,054 and a grant of €62,381 and has been possible thanks to the close collaboration between the Packaging Cluster and the Spanish Center for Plastics.

Servicontrol - Automated and connected manufacturing

Finally, the largest project promoted by the entity is SERVICONTROL, which promotes "Automated and connected manufacturing". This action will develop, on the one hand, the process control in the production of containers (primary packaging), and, on the other, will implement the monitoring of machinery in packaging application (secondary and tertiary packaging), thus improving productivity control , of the process and obtaining a data processing. In addition, connectivity between companies in the value chain is promoted, thus promoting the servitization business model for SMEs. The consortium led by the AEI Packaging Cluster, is made up of a packaging manufacturer, Industrias Plásticas Triana; a software company, Tepsis; an E21 engineering; and an integrator of packaging process solutions, Controlpack. The total budget for the project is €379,248, endowed with a grant of €206,989, which has been promoted thanks to the collaboration promoted within the cluster between companies in the value chain.

On February 18, in collaboration with CEEC, INNOVACC and INNOVI, the Packaging Cluster will present the bases of the new call for AEI scheduled for the end of this month of February, in which an online multisectoral ideation workshop will be held, sign up here. This first call is expected to obtain an endowment of €8M, followed by a second call for the third quarter of this year, June-July, with an endowment of a further €50M, coming from the Next Generation funds.

The management of these grants is part of the Packaging Cluster's Next Generation Projects Office, which works to promote the achievement of significant proposals among its 120 associates. If you have a project idea and want to assess its viability for public funding, get in touch through this form.