Transfer Story: Matosinhos Portugal

MATOSINHOS TRANSFER STORY

December 2020

Original Ambition:

Originally, Matosinhos set out to develop a Blue Growth Competition which was largely focussed on trying to solve issues of sea waste. Because of concerns about the range of existing blue growth competitions available nationally, and because the ‘sponsoring department’ in the Municipality was also environmentally focussed, the Municipality targeted a special niche, linked to pollution in the sea.

As far as the competition is concerned, Matosinhos originally planned to launch the competition in July, with a September closing date for applications. The process would involve an Open Call, a Bootcamp and a Workshop Programme, with three business ideas selected for incubation. The process the Municipality adopted broadly followed the five stages of the Piraeus Blue Growth Initiative.

The original timetable planned for Matosinhos’ competition was as follows;

• Competition Preparation: Jan – Aug 2019
• Competition Launch: Jan 2019
• Competition Close: Aug 2019
• Demo Day/Award Ceremony:  Sept/Nov 2019
• Incubation: Nov 2019 – Nov 2020

The original goals set out in the Transfer Plan were to;

• Incubate 3 new start-ups from November 2019 to November 2020.
• To have generated 10 applications for the programme by July 2019;
• Organise a bootcamp with 10 participants by September 2019
• To have organised a demo day, by October 2019, at which we hope to have 10 potential entrepreneurs presenting their business idea.

Finalists of the Matosinhos BluAct competition

Successes Achieved by Matosinhos;

The Municipality set out by building a strong ULG, comprising 13 partners and also secured some commercial sponsorship through SuperBock, to support any entrepreneurs that enter the competition with an idea to reduce or address sea waste.  The environmental sustainability prize would only be fully granted if the Municipality could evidence good environmental practices from the companies in the incubation programme.

The Municipality hired a communication company to update all their social platforms and used press advertising to generate applications. Marketing wise, they organised a launch and established a website, which secured national coverage.

Matosinhos’ three main incentives to encourage people to apply were the sponsorship funding secured from SuperBock; the incubation support; but also mentoring during the incubation period.

In the end their competition was open from late 2019 until 9 Feb 2020, with a bootcamp scheduled 26 Feb – 2 March 2020, which would be followed by a Demo Day and a 12-month incubation programme.

By the time the competition had closed, the city had received 7 high-quality applications from which they selected 3 winners who will be put through an incubation programme provided by UPTEC MAR.

The business ideas selected to progress included;

• A degradable Polylactic Acid.
• A business renewing and recycling Shipping Containers
• An aquaculture business that aims to improve fish food, through a pink plankomycete-based diet.

Challenges experienced by Matosinhos

As far as Competition Delivery is concerned Matosinhos suffered quite a significant delay (due to the time taken to complete administrative procedures) and the competition finally launched in late October 2019 with a Bootcamp scheduled for the end of November and Demo Day scheduled in December.

Further slippages meant the city had quite a short competition window over the Christmas holiday period, which may have limited the number of applications received.

Results achieved by Matosinhos

At the time of writing, Matosinhos has delivered;

• 1 Transfer Plan
• 1 Urbact Local Group, comprised of 9 local stakeholder organisations
• €10,000 of cash sponsorship secured
• 12 business proposals/ideas generated
• 11 events organised, involving over 300 attendees
• 3 businesses incubated

Next Steps

Matosinhos has been successful in attracting a number of high-quality applicants for their competition this year, a number of which are quite heavily research orientated. Going forward, these businesses will require further support to scale their activities and this is where the Municipality will be concentrating its efforts, through its close partnership with UPTEC MAR, the Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto, which has a base in Matosinhos.