The College of Agricultural Engineers of Levante (COIAL) today presented the awards that its foundation grants annually. In this ninth edition the jury has decided to award Global Omnium the Innovation award.
The dean of COIAL, Joaquim Aguilella, presided over this awards ceremony for the first time and focused an important part of his speech on digitalization. “Let no one have the slightest doubt that the digital transition is going to extend to all production structures,” but he has emphasized that “this will be only as good as the resources, means of production and infrastructure on which it is applied.” , which is why he has urged those present to pay close attention to the generation of knowledge, the development of infrastructure and facilitating the cultural change that this technological disruption requires.
After thanking him for the award, the general director of Global Omnium, Vicente Fajardo, stated that for his company, “technology makes sense when its ultimate goal and the mission it pursues is to improve people's lives. As simple as that. That is our differential value as a company.” Fajardo has committed that at Global Omnium “we will continue working every day to be better, contribute to protecting our Environment and ensure a better future for everyone.”
More than 300 representatives of regional administrations, sectoral organizations, institutions, companies, members and journalists from the agri-food, environmental and biotechnology systems attended the event.
On the other hand, Aguilella has highlighted "the progress in terms of collaboration with the administration, which has made it possible to initiate projects that facilitate the connection between professionals and the administration to unify criteria and systematize and simplify procedures."
In statements following his speech, the dean of COIAL has been very critical of the known advances of PERTE Agri-Food: “The first thing that caught our attention was the scarce resources that the largest manufacturing industry in the country had. And today we are concerned because, at the moment, only 161.5 million of the 510 initially assigned to this PERTE have been awarded, 31% of the total.”
Aguilella has pointed out that this circumstance is not surprising, since it was based on an approach that left out primary production and distribution, when they are links in the same chain: "It makes no sense to propose an improvement within the industry and excluding what happens in the countryside, the demands of consumers or the way food is distributed. “They have treated it as an isolated thing when it is not.” For this reason, he has asked for an urgent rethinking of PERTE, but this time of the agri-food system in its entirety. “There is very little time left, but we must try.” Something, by the way, totally consistent with the speech that Von der Leyen gave this week, in which he focuses on the agri-food sector, about which he has announced a “strategic dialogue.” Aguilella has offered “the help of agronomists to redesign a PERTE that takes advantage of all Next Generation funds, a large part of which we risk losing.”
Tono de la Torre has received the PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE AWARD “for his excellent professional and business resume and for offering an exceptional combination of technical skills, strategic vision and human leadership. His impact in the field of engineering and his contribution to the development of innovative projects consistent with the objectives of the awards are more than evident and notable. Among his many business experiences, he was vice president and CEO of Grupotec, the largest engineering company in the Valencian Community. De la Torre has been “very grateful to my colleagues for the award. Just as I can be a recipient of this award, so too are many colleagues with an extraordinary professional career. It is very important for me to feel that over the years I have earned the love and respect of the people I have worked with.”
Novel Excellence Awards
The COIAL awards also have a section to recognize the work of the best Master's Thesis signed by students of the Master of Agricultural Engineering from the schools of the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands. The Novel Excellence award went to Teresa García Hidalgo, and the Best TFM Award in the Engineering Project category went to Aina Obrador. The Award for Best TFM in the Best Professional Work category has been ex aequo to Francisco Javier Andreu and Marta Malea.
