The first prize for the Connect'Up business innovation contest in the entrepreneur category has gone to VEnvirotech. This project, the idea of two women - Noelia Márquez and Patricia Aymà - transforms waste into bioplastics. A kilo of waste can become 23 grams of plastic that is harmless to the environment. Its applications are considered to be revolutionary and the project is also one of twenty finalists in an innovation competition run by Repsol. Patricia Aymà was unable to to attend the prize-giving as she was preparing for the Repsol contest.
The second and third prizes were for tourism technologies. A Minorcan, Joan Montoya, took the second prize for Travelinho, a search engine for combining journeys by air, sea and land (buses). Three for Fest, a project presented by Juan Navalón and Fermín Dorado, is a web platform for creating specialist packages for music festivals with accommodation, flights and car hire.
The winner in the Intrapreneur category was La Mano Lectora, while Jóvenes Comunicadores del Futuro took the prize in the Vocational Training/Baccalaureate category.
The prizes were given at the CaixaForum in Palma by Carmen Serra, the president of Grup Serra, the organisers of Connect'Up; María Alsina, the regional director of sponsors CaixaBank; and Josep Lluis Pons, the government's director-general of innovation and research.