Plug and Play Launches Maritime Innovation Platform in Antwerp, Belgium

m Startup collaboration at the local and global level 

Led by a local team of four people, Plug and Play Maritime aims to strengthen an innovative startup ecosystem centered around the seafaring sector, that brings new technologies and entrepreneurs to the region and enables technological and business development. Plug and Play Maritime will be situated at the pre-campus of Maritime Campus Antwerp. The launch event, which will mark the start of the first program batch, is planned for June 2021. 

“The launching of our first maritime platform in Antwerp represents the beginning of a new ‘voyage’ for us at Plug and Play. We are eager to support our founding partners and the existing local innovation community through our global ecosystem, by means of impactful startup-corporate collaboration,” says Saeed Amidi, Founder and CEO of Plug and Play

“With Plug and Play, the City of Antwerp and Port of Antwerp strengthen their position as innovation leaders in the international maritime business. The city wants to be part of the European top of scale-up cities by 2025. We take a lot of initiatives in our growth clusters: digital and circular economy. The City and the Port work closely together in the digital innovation hub The Beacon. With Plug and Play this collaboration gets a new dimension. We are confident that thanks to this new initiative, Plug and Play Maritime, we will be able to accelerate our joined ambitions,” shares Claude Marinower, Vice-Mayor for Economy, Industry and Innovation, City of Antwerp.

Open Innovation enables tech that will shape the future of Maritime 

Antwerp, home to the second largest port in Europe, is a hub for the maritime industry with a longstanding tradition. With its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Plug and Play’s expansion into this sector will provide an opportunity for the five Founding Partners to increase their innovation activities with access to a network of over 30,000 global startups. Initial technology areas for scouting will include clean fuels and energy, big data and Internet of Things, future logistics, efficient shipping, autonomous vessels, sensors, and more. By providing innovation-as-a-service, this platform will also play a strategic role for the partners in pioneering a sustainable maritime industry of the future throughout Belgium and around the world.

Further offerings for startups, partners, and the growing ecosystem include business development, dealflows, workshops, weekly mentorship sessions, networking between partners, investment opportunities, and a series of monthly events including, Selection Days, Innovation Days, and EXPO Days. Plug and Play Maritime will run local operations from the pre-campus of Maritime Campus Antwerp, a co-working space for startups to utilize and scale their business.

“For the moment we have world class ports like the Port of Antwerp and a world class maritime industry in our country. To maintain our position, we need to look and think ahead,” comments Alexander Saverys, CEO of CMB. “Joining forces with partners creates scale in know-how and competencies resulting in R&D and innovation. This will help us to stay on top of new evolutions in the industry. Plug and Play, together with our Maritime Campus Antwerp, will help us to support our ambitions.”

“The fundamental idea of the Maritime Campus Antwerp is to create scale and combine forces among those maritime players and stakeholders that want to tackle the huge innovation challenges for the maritime industry in the decades to come. The Plug and Play Maritime platform will contribute to the Maritime Campus Antwerp ecosystem by bringing the best startups and early scale-ups from all over the world to Antwerp to accelerate the introduction of maritime tech for our corporate partners,” says Bart Huybrechts, Managing Director, Maritime Campus Antwerp.

Plug and Play Maritime offers a wide range of services to entrepreneurs

The basis of Plug and Play Maritime will be the 12-week open innovation program, run twice a year. Each program welcomes 20+ selected international startups that are addressing the specific technological needs of the Founding Partners. The startups and business units of the partners will work together on pilots and proof of concepts, leading towards production-ready implementations. The goal is to have at least one joint project completed for each startup, to be showcased at EXPO Day, the final event at the end of each program. 

“Innovation can play a key role in making the future and prosperity of the port of Antwerp sustainable. The ecosystem represented by the Antwerp port platform is an ideal testbed for technology on a large scale. With Plug and Play Maritime we can live up to this ambition and play a pioneering role as a port of the future. In this way we seek to be a source of inspiration and to set an example for other ports. ” explains Annick De Ridder, Vice Mayor of the Port of Antwerp.

“The Plug and Play platform will enable us to leverage our R&D capabilities and set up structural collaborations with start-ups and the wider ecosystem to drive mutual growth and benefits. We must invest in new technologies to further digitalize our Industry but also to make shipping cleaner and more efficient,” states Hugo De Stoop, CEO of Euronav. “This is at the heart of our sustainability program to ensure our future relevance and competitiveness. Engaging in innovative ecosystems such as that of Plug and Play, together with the founding partners, is critical to achieve our long-term ambitions.”

Founding Partners provide expertise and a vision of sustainable innovation 

The consortium of Founding Partners consists of a distinctive blend of expertise and functions within the maritime sector, which will provide high value for startups looking to bring their technologies directly to key stakeholders in the industry.

“Collaborating with the Plug and Play network of startups will enable us to explore bleeding-edge innovations and how to integrate with our offerings across the Enterprise Technology Stack so we can deliver opportunities for our customers at lower cost and greater speed. We are proud to bring the capabilities of DXC to help incubated startups deploy their solution at scale, particularly in the areas of supply chain and logistics. Partnering with Plug and Play underlines our focus on our people and on our customers, associating our transformation to the ‘new DXC’ with the values of collaboration and value-led innovation,” says Frederic Hertogs, Managing Director, DXC Technology, Belgium. 

“As one of the leading ports in the world, Antwerp aspires to be the ‘port of the future’.  We use innovation as a lever to turn today’s major challenges such as energy transition, digitalization, and mobility into solutions. Through collaboration and implementing technologies such as big data, IoT, smart shipping, and future logistics, we are making our port smarter and more efficient. I believe that Plug and Play Maritime is an important milestone in bringing our port to the next international level and positioning it as a leading innovation platform,” explains Jacques Vandermeiren, CEO, Port of Antwerp.

Corporations, startups, investors, and other industry leaders interested in getting involved, visit the website.

Latest Issue:

Today, no frontier is beyond an offshore operator’s capacity. While Remote Marine Operations can mean different things to different ocean…

Your cON&Tent matters. Make it count.

Send us your latest corporate news, blogs or press releases.

Search