«It will be from Pechão, with Altice Portugal, for the world». The location of the future Altice Lab in Olhão has already been chosen and this hub of one of the main technological development laboratories in the country, based in Aveiro, should be inaugurated by the end of the first half of 2019.
The installation of this laboratory in Olhão was formalized between Altice Portugal and the Câmara de Olhão in a session that took place on the 4th of October. The company's executive committee, headed by its president Alexandre Fonseca, was in the Algarve city to make official the creation of this former PT Inovação pole, which had already been announced about a year ago.
However, a lot of homework was done, including the identification of a place to install this structure. And the chosen location is the Bela Mandil Industrial Zone, in the parish of Pechão.
«We are already negotiating with the owner of two stores in the Bela Mandil Industrial Zone, between Olhão and Faro, which has the necessary conditions for the installation of Altice Labs and expansion capacity, in the event of startups that want to install there», he revealed to Sul Informação the mayor of Olhão, on the sidelines of the protocol signing session with Altice Portugal.
According to António Pina, the inauguration of the Altice Lab in Olhão “depends only on negotiations with the store owners. If it is successful, which we believe will happen and the process will be completed by the end of the year, we can point to the inauguration of the Altice Labs' Olhão hub by the end of the first half of 2019».
«The acquisition of the space and all the furniture will be made by the local authority, as stipulated in the protocol, and the digital equipment will be guaranteed by Altice. The necessary investment will be around 150 thousand euros», added the mayor from Olhano.
In an exclusive interview he gave to Sul Informação, Alexandre Fonseca, Executive President of Altice Portugal, assured that, after having announced a year ago that the Altice Labs decentralization process would pass through Olhão, the company he runs "didn't stop at the diagnosis" and that today everything is "clearer and more defined for the activity to be developed". Something that, he says, “is evident in the projects that we are integrating and in those that we have to announce”.
«Altice Portugal has been maintaining close and permanent contacts with the local authority and with the strategic coordinating council that was established. following this kick off. There is no room for doubt here: we want an Altice Labs pole in Olhão. This protocol embodies that very thing and is another step for that to happen», he said.
“The truth is that concrete steps have been taken, in the context of the development of partnerships and dialogue with various agents, with the region's living forces and with academia. Therefore, we seek to find a community that can enrich and make viable what are innovation ideas, products, technologies», added Alexandre Fonseca.
This design involves, to a large extent, other protocols that were signed by Altice Portugal in recent days, namely the agreements signed with the University of Algarve and Algarve STP, the association that will boost the future Algarve Tech Hub.
This association is an example of the «entrepreneurial environment» that António Pina considers is growing in the Central Algarve, which will eventually feed the Altice Lab in Olhão. «We are going to belong to this group [Algarve STP], which is led by the University of Algarve and involves ANJE and the municipalities of Faro and Loulé”, announced António Pina.
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