Invest in Madrid promoted a meeting between the Board of Directors of the Spanish Logistics Center and the directors general of the main departments of the Community of Madrid related to logistics and transportation. Luis Socías, the executive director of Invest in Madrid, moderated this event, aiming to bring the real needs of companies closer to the competent authorities.
During the meeting, the Director-General of Economy, Juan Manuel López-Zafra; the Director-General of Transport and Mobility, Luis Miguel Torres; the Director-General of Digital Strategy, Ignacio Azorín, and the Director-General of Training, Mercedes Marín, revealed the position of the Community of Madrid, announcing different measures that are being implemented for companies to, in the words of Zafra, “facilitate economic development and contribute to their evolution through public-private collaboration and the removal of barriers.”
Torres emphasized that collaboration is one of the “added values of management in the community” and a necessary factor to advance towards homogeneity among municipal regulations regarding mobility, which, he acknowledged, “pay more attention to passenger transport.” Additionally, he announced the law under development for mobility in the Community of Madrid, which will address the issues of freight transportation.
Following this initial meeting, the creation of four joint working groups – Community of Madrid and CEL – has been evaluated, which would respond to the main business demands collected by the Spanish Logistics Center and are based on training, mobility regulations, accessibility to grants, innovation, and digitization.
Sector Demands
Ana González and Ramón García, president and general director of CEL respectively, reviewed the context and the main challenges and trends facing current supply chains. Representatives of logistics companies presented their demands to achieve greater competitiveness for the nearly 300 companies associated with CEL, operating in all links of the value chain.
In this regard, García emphasized that logistics is “a field of greater application than it seems at first glance, reaching every part of the value chain and not just transportation companies.”
Thus, among the demands collected are requests for logistics parks (rest areas for truck drivers, lighting, security, access, 5G, increased charging points…), promotion of intermodality, requests for improvement in accessibility to urban environments, and regional harmonization of regulations, especially Low Emission Zones (LEZs); as well as advice and support on environmental impact and digitization.
Other requests also referred to the need to simplify bureaucracy, both for grants and for vocational training and internships in companies; raising awareness of the sector and its employment opportunities; or understanding the degree of maturity in technological adoption and cybersecurity protocols for carrying out end-to-end digitization.
One of the sector’s biggest concerns is the lack of talent. Therefore, CEL has proposed various measures, including one based on innovation through the use and recognition of the application of immersive virtual reality technologies, such as those developed in GameLabsNET Madrid, to train highly demanded profiles that meet companies’ needs without incurring high costs or bottlenecks that result from their implementation.
About the Organizers
Since 1978, the Spanish Logistics Center (CEL) has been the national and international reference association for supply chain management in Spain. It is focused on adding value to its partners through knowledge and innovation in logistics management. To this end, it acts as a sector benchmark through research, compilation, selection, and updating of the most innovative logistics management techniques and emerging business trends in the global economy.
Invest in Madrid is the agency for attracting foreign investment to the Community of Madrid, attached to the Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Employment. One of its missions is to address the demands of foreign companies established in the region to find a solution to possible problems, assist them in their expansion process, and prevent possible relocations. In this sense, acting as an intermediary with other agents of the Public Administration is essential to open channels of collaboration that can accelerate and facilitate the resolution of the most common problems faced by these companies.