Rotterdam-based PortXL, a maritime startup accelerator, announced on Monday, that it has signed a partnership agreement with MINDbase Rotterdam, one of the ‘hubs’ of the Dutch Ministry of Defence’s innovation organisation.
MINDbase was established in 2020 to promote military-focused innovations. Its activities take place at RDM Innovation Dock in Rotterdam, as well as locations in Eindhoven and Enschede.
MINDbase works under the umbrella of COMMIT, one of the six branches of the Dutch Ministry of Defence. COMMIT ensures that Dutch military personnel work with modern, robust, and safe materials and IT.
To accomplish this, a significant part of COMMIT’s duties is the purchase and maintenance of material.
MINDbase Innovation Manager Major Rick Zagers explains, “The time when the Ministry of Defence was smarter than the market is not a given anymore; today’s commercial sector is most of the times more innovative, adaptive, and faster. Therefore, we as the Ministry of Defence have had to accelerate.”
PortXL: World port accelerator
Founded in 2015, PortXL is an ecosystem of startups, scale-ups, corporate partners, and mentors – all change-makers, creative thinkers, and problem solvers who work collaboratively to disrupt the status quo.
Since its inception, PortXL has facilitated the growth of more than 100 startup and scale-up companies.
PortXL, in collaboration with its industry partners, has been focusing on the maritime, energy, logistics, and refinery sectors. Its partners include the Port of Rotterdam, Van Oord, Boskalis, Rotterdam City Council, Damen Shipyards, and GTT.
With this latest partner ‘acquisition’ of MINDbase, PortXL’s scope has broadened to now also encompass military applications.
“We are so proud to welcome MINDbase to the PortXL organisation; the military has always been a frontrunner when it comes to innovation,” says Christel Pullens, PortXL Managing Director.
“We have been working together ‘under the radar’ in the past few months and this has been very exciting – not only for us but also for our other partners. The Ministry of Defence has similar challenges to our other partners, but they look at things from a different angle. Safety, of course, is key. But also, due to a shortage of personnel they are very interested in digitalisation and automation. Last but not least, increasing the sustainability of operations is unsurprisingly an important area of focus,” says Pullens.
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/rotterdams-portxl-partners-with-mindbase/
