“Hoday we launched the Sines Tech-Innovation Data Center Hub with several partners with the aim of building an infrastructure in Sines that will later enable the country to make a digital transition,” said Filipe Costa, executive president of aicep Global Parques, to Lusa agency.

The cooperation protocol for the creation of the community was signed between the Municipality of Sines, aicep Global Parques, and EllaLink, Fast Fiber, IP Telecom, Rentelecom, StartCampus, Sines Tecnopolo and the Foundation for Science and Technology, related entities to information and communication.

“The process began in 2019 with the Sines Chamber and EllaLink”, with the “investment in the cable mooring station” and “the mooring of the Europe-Brazil submarine cable”, which is “a strategic cable for the European Union” , explained the person in charge of the managing entity of the Industrial and Logistics Zone of Sines (ZILS).

According to Filipe Costa, the ‘Sines Tech’, located at ZILS, has the ambition not only of “attracting the mooring of submarine cables for intercontinental telecommunications”, but also of “fixing large ‘data centers'” in this territory.

“We want the mooring of more submarine cables that connect us to the Mediterranean, to Northern Europe, to the American hemisphere and, alongside that, we want to start building Data Center projects”, he stressed.

The ‘Sines Tech’ community is now joined by the Start Campus project, an investment of around 3.5 million euros, “for the largest data center in renewable energy ​​in Europe”, and other partners “thinking about connectivity to the hinterland “and in an” academic and scientific component”, he indicated.

These projects “will transform the digital economy in Portugal, because we now have the infrastructure that makes this digital transition possible”, with tools capable of transforming Portugal “into a hub of connectivity between Europe and the world”, allowing the growth of the digital economy from the country.

“We want data to be processed ​​in Portugal and that the digital economy produces an added value in Portugal”, reinforced Filipe Costa, recognizing “the challenge of attracting the infrastructure of the digital economy to Sines” with “added value for Sines and for the Alentejo “

With this bet, Portugal is no longer “peripheral, in terms of telecommunications, with the passage of the great intercontinental routes”, and its usufruct.

For the Mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas, the importance of this new economic cluster “is enormous” as it is an “absolutely essential” area to “guarantee the future of Sines”, not only from an economic point of view, as social.

“This new cluster, with these companies, will make no future possible to attract contracted technicians to Sines who will be important to respond” to the companies and “for the growth of the population” in this territory.

The mayor also considers that the consolidation of a technological cluster creates challenges for the local government, making it necessary to reinforce training, increase the offer of housing, “more diversified and with better prices”, and bet on “improving accessibility”.

By the end of 2023, aicep Global Parques hopes to “have more cables tied up” or “to be public cable tie decisions [submarinos] in Sines “connected to northern and southern Europe and the North American continent.

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