Matosinhos Offers the Old Galp Refinery and Maia Puts Up 70 Hectares, as Porto's Innovation Hub Plan Goes Metropolitan
The PITCH project, first priced at 900 million euros, was taken up by the Porto Metropolitan Area on Friday. Pedro Duarte welcomed a "healthy competition" between councils and said it can go ahead without the State.
Porto's plan for a large innovation and technology hub stopped being a Porto project on Friday. At a meeting of the Porto Metropolitan Area (AMP), the PITCH scheme, short for Porto Innovation and Technology Community, was taken up at metropolitan scale, and two neighbouring mayors immediately put land on the table to host part of it.
Matosinhos offered a plot on the site of the former Galp oil refinery in Leça da Palmeira. Maia offered 70 hectares of its own. Gondomar said it was willing to take part and would come forward with proposals later, according to ECO's account of the meeting.
From one city to a network of parks
PITCH was presented on 9 June as a Porto initiative, built with the city's universities, with the aim of creating an innovation and knowledge hub by 2029. Its promoters want it to become one of Europe's largest platforms for sharing knowledge and innovation. The plan is a regional network of science and technology parks, organised as a subsystem of Portus Park, with the Asprela Innovation District, in Porto's university quarter, upgraded first as a pilot and proof of concept.
The investment, first estimated at 900 million euros, is no longer a fixed figure now that more councils, higher education institutions and companies are joining, Porto's mayor, Pedro Duarte, said. He described the arrival of other municipalities as a natural step for an initiative that began in Porto but has grown big enough to be run at metropolitan level, and welcomed what he called a "healthy competition" between councils to host its parts. PITCH could be "strategic" for the metropolitan area, for the North and for the country, he said.
He also said it could go ahead without public money. "We don't need the State to sponsor us or teach us how we should move forward," Duarte said.
Matosinhos: 40 hectares at the old refinery
The mayor of Matosinhos, Luísa Salgueiro, said her council has "every interest" in positioning itself in the project, and in leading it. "We have a 40-hectare parcel intended for a university campus at the former refinery that should be considered," she said.
That land became available after Galp announced on 21 December 2020 that it would close the Matosinhos refinery and concentrate refining at Sines, a decision that led to the collective dismissal of 114 workers. The parcel was set aside under a 2022 cooperation protocol between the council, Galp, the University of Porto and the regional development commission for the North (CCDR-N), which also provided for an innovation district on the refinery site.
Maia: 70 hectares and an argument from scale
The mayor of Maia, António Silva Tiago, offered a 70-hectare plot the council bought some years ago, and made his case on the size of the local economy. "Maia is currently the fourth most exporting municipality and the second largest consumer of electricity in the country, and has almost 20,000 companies," he told fellow mayors.
What comes next
No site has been chosen, no budget has been fixed and no timetable beyond the 2029 target has been set for the new poles. What changed on Friday is the map: a project that began around one university campus in Porto now has land on offer in Matosinhos and Maia, and a third council, Gondomar, waiting to make its case.
