The nautical industry is booming in the Balearics. A sure sign of this is the yearly increase in the number of visitors to the Palma Boat Show, which opens on 28 April. Given this boom, the Institute for Business Innovation (IDI), which comes under the ministry for employment, trade and industry, will be giving potential investors the chance to network with nautical businesses.
A room at the boat show is to be set aside for this purpose and will have room for up to forty investors to consider eight projects that have been selected. The IDI, which has been working on this for several weeks, has whittled an initial list of 24 projects down to the eight that will be presented.
These are projects of a business start-up nature, which are no more than two years old, and businesses in a growth stage that are more than two years old. They are all related to the nautical sector in its broadest sense and cover information and communications technologies, energy, port management, materials, engines and others. Five of them are based in the Balearics, two are in Barcelona and the other in Valencia.
The IDI says that it mainly expects to attract local investors, though it also anticipates that foreign investors will be attending the event. The projects, it notes, are ones with the type of risk that make bank financing difficult and that they require between 50,000 and 300,000 euros. The networking session will be on 28 April.