Rio Maior Municipality has signed the financing contract for the Business Hosting Area (AAE) – “Rio Maior New Generation Business”, under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). The signed document represents a financing of 12,798,931.97 euros, and will be executed between 2022 and the end of 2025, and will allow the consolidation of this AAE, currently comprising close to 400 plots, 50 companies and around 1,847 active jobs.
This project resulted from an application to the RRF approved earlier this year and has a set of investments and interventions planned, including production and storage systems for energy from renewable sources for self-consumption and renewable energy communities. It also includes investments aimed at implementing sustainable mobility in the AAE, namely with the installation of charging stations for electric vehicles (light and heavy). It also considers the strengthening of communications coverage throughout the AAE, through the implementation and provision of the 5G network.
The formalisation of the document, which took place last March 24th at Paços do Concelho (Town Hall), in Rio Maior, was attended by the Minister for Territorial Cohesion, Ana Abrunhosa, accompanied by the Assistant Secretary of State and Regional Development, Carlos Miguel, and the Secretary of State for the Interior Valorisation, Isabel Ferreira, the Mayor of Rui Maior, Filipe Santana Dias, the President of CCDR LVT, Teresa Almeida, and the representative of the Mission Structure Recovering Portugal (EMRP), Conceição Carvalho.
The Mayor of the Municipality of Rio Maior, Filipe Santana Dias, said that this is a key funding for the development of Rio Maior. He also said that the requalification of the AAE will not only attract more companies and create more jobs, but also reinforce the competitiveness of the Municipality, leading in the areas of innovation, sustainability and energy transition.
For her part, Conceição Carvalho, of EMRP, mentioned that this process was a good example of the principle of centralisation of the management of the RRF in the Mission Structure and the decentralisation of its implementation, through the Portuguese Regional Coordination and Development Commissions (CCDR) and the municipalities.
The President of the CCDR LVT, Teresa Almeida highlighted the fact that this is one of the 10 projects selected among the 81 expressions of interest submitted after the opening of the notice in June 2021, after a process of analysis by a jury that included the five CCDR of the continent.
She also mentioned that the implementation of this investment will allow the Municipality of Rio Maior to contribute to the decarbonisation and reduction of carbon emissions associated with the activity of the companies installed in this AAE, to reinforce the attractiveness of the municipality s economic fabric and to fix jobs, with an impact on the recovery of the national economy, in the post-pandemic context.
Teresa Almeida also stressed the “extreme demand” of a process that must be concluded by 2025, in the current context of instability, generating much uncertainty in the ability of companies to materialise and in the context costs.
The Minister for Territorial Cohesion, Ana Abrunhosa, concluded this ceremony, highlighting in her intervention the importance of showing people where the funding and opportunities promoted by the RRF are applied, stating that the approximately 13 million Euros formalised with the Rio Maior Municipality will provide industrial areas with “5G digital connectivity, islands to produce and store energy, and systems for fire fighting”, giving companies “conditions that today are absolutely fundamental”, to ensure their competitiveness, especially when energy costs weigh so heavily in the context of production.