Euskadi will be the guest region at the 25th edition of the SIL

• Euskadi will contribute its knowledge in logistics as a key player in the Atlantic Corridor thanks to its ports, airports, road network, railway network and industrial centres.

• Idoia Mendia, Vicelehendakari and Councillor for Labour and Employment, Iñaki Arriola López, Councillor for Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport, and Pere Navarro, special delegate of the State in the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB) and president of SIL, have closed the agreement this morning at the Vizcaya headquarters of the Basque Government.
• The event was also attended by Blanca Sorigué, general director of the CZFB and SIL.

Barcelona, 28 April 2023 – Euskadi will be the guest region at the 25^th Anniversary of SIL 2023, the Leading Exhibition for Logistics, Transport, Intralogistics and Supply Chain in Spain, Southern Europe, the Mediterranean and Latin America, which will take place from 7 to 9 June in pavilion 8 of the Plaza España at Fira Barcelona. In this way, the region will showcase its key position as a strategic logistics hub of the European Atlantic Axis, recognised as such by the European Union for its role in the Atlantic Corridor.

This morning, at the Bizkaia headquarters of the Basque Government, the various authorities closed this agreement between the community and SIL which is organised by the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB). The meeting was attended by Idoia Mendia, Vicelehendakari and Councillor for Labour and Employment, Iñaki Arriola, Minister of Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport, and Pere Navarro, special delegate of the State in the CZFB and president of SIL. The event was also attended by Blanca Sorigué, Director General of the CZFB and SIL.

The importance of Euskadi in the logistics sector

With a GDP in 2021 of 71,528 million euros and with industry as an economic driver, the Euskadi region will contribute a great deal of knowledge about the logistics environment to the Fair thanks to aspects such as its own geographical nature, its economic fabric and its development in multimodal infrastructures, which provide an efficient response to business needs.

In each of the three territories that make up the region, infrastructures are deployed that favour the competitiveness of the industrial sector and that promote multimodality, through the important port of Bilbao, the Vitoria-Gasteiz airport as one of the main loading points at national level, the road network, the rail network and the logistics centres.

Currently, the autonomous community has infrastructures that make Euskadi a node capable of facing the important challenges posed by the smart logistics of the future, giving it a key importance in sustainability and promoting the digitalisation of the sector, through the NEXT-EU funds.

Euskadi is immersed in a plan promoted by the Basque Government’s Department of Transport to promote sustainable logistics, developing infrastructures that enable multimodality with the railway as a strategically key mode to evolve towards a lower carbon footprint and decongestion of roads. Likewise, through the Department of Labour and Employment is developing a specific programme for training in the different phases of logistics, attending to traditional professions and also to those that respond to the challenges of the future and seeking the incorporation of more women and young vocations into a sector in constant growth and transformation.

Pere Navarro has commented that “we are proud to have the presence of such an important logistics region at SIL. This gives a strong boost of quality and sectorial knowledge to the event which, added to the participation of other international congresses, makes it the largest meeting point in a single venue for major professionals with decision-making power from southern Europe, Latin America and the Mediterranean”.

For her part, Idoia Mendia, thanked the SIL for the opportunity it offers Euskadi to project itself as “a strategic point of connection from Europe to the west of the peninsula, where in addition to infrastructures, we have a training plan for people to meet the volume of employment that is expected to increase over the next decade in logistics tasks, both in transport and warehousing”. “Because the commitment to the future is not only investment in technology, but also in people, and we have decided that the prospect of quality employment should form part of all public policies”, she added.

Likewise, Iñaki Arriola, wanted to highlight that ” Euskadi is a strategic node of the Atlantic Corridor in terms of logistics, which connects the Iberian Peninsula with Europe and which is laying the foundations, through the railway mode, to promote sustainable logistics, an essential challenge for advanced societies on which SIL gives the opportunity to deepen among the different agents of the sector”.