This session served to highlight the three innovation projects agreed by protocol with the national Environmental Fund, relating to the produce of water for reutilisation in agricultural activities and evaluating the risks of forest fires with impacts on the water supply and sanitation infrastructures.

Over the next three years, the AdP Group is to allocate over one million euros to the fund just launched both to specifically finance new projects and to accelerate strategic innovation.

Innovation is one of the core challenges within the Strategic Framework of Commitment of the AdP Group. Published in November 2020, this document sets out the Group’s vision for 2030 and its positioning as one of the most efficient and sustainable international operators in water management, focused on excellence in client services, innovation, resilience, carbon neutrality and the circular economy. 

The urgency over boosting the resilience of the infrastructural systems, the need to adapt to climate change and decarbonize the urban water cycle, the efficient usage and valuation of resources from the perspective of the circular economy, the maximisation of the life cycle of infrastructures, the importance of innovating in the relationships with clients and society in general, alongside the scope for the ongoing digital transformation, constitute some of the challenges facing the water sector and the AdP Group.

"Throughout over two decades, innovation was a constant in the activities of AdP Group companies, whether on an internal level through means of participation in open innovation networks, they have known how to position themselves to provide a service of excellence, guaranteeing the standards required for social, economic and financial sustainability," declared José Furtado, President of the Águas de Portugal Board of Directors. "However, this justifies doing more, more quickly and in increasingly focused and integrated approaches, within a context of economic rationality, taking advantage of the capacities and competences existing in our companies and the regions where they are present."

It is within this context that 360º Innovation emerges, framed by the launching of a new AdP Group business instrument, AdP VALOR, which is to serve as an accelerator for evolving this paradigm with the mission of driving strategic innovation, managing new business models under the auspices of the circular economy and implementing specialist projects and services that contribute towards strengthening the resilience, efficiency and sustainability of Group operations. 

The 360º Innovation Strategy, now publicly presented, highlights innovation as a vector for the agility and acceleration of the AdP Group commitment for this decade, defining the path of the AdP Group in evolving the paradigm necessary to respond to the new societal challenges.

This strategy shall further deepen the innovation already undertaken by AdP Group companies within the scope of their operations and projects that have been developed in consortia involving diverse national and international entities, adding a proactive component in an integrated organisational model and with a structure functioning coupled with investment due to attain a million euros over the forthcoming three years. 

Highlighting how “the water sector is perceived worldwide as a slow sector to innovate”, José Furtado then emphasised that “in a world of accelerated change, increasingly complex and challenging, there is a need to ascertain the pace of innovation and strategically adopt this within a framework of economic rationality.”

Innovating in business models and technological solutions, fostering agility in action, catalysing the organisation in networks able to leverage synergies, enabling the valuation of the critical competences available represent some of the key vectors of the 360º Innovation Strategy of the AdP Group, which shall invest in the development of scalable pilot projects adaptable to international markets, taking due advantage of the existing Living-Labs in the group and favouring partnerships that return added value with public and private entities.

In the AdP Group 360º Innovation Strategy presentation session, the President of Águas de Portugal focused on the commitment thereby assumed: “we are convinced that innovation is necessary to complying with our mission, to strengthening our client centred service culture and for society in general, to provide increasingly resilient services and to contain tariffs at socially appropriate levels.” 

This saw the presentation of various of the innovation projects ongoing across the AdP Group with emphasis on the three projects protocoled with the Environment Fund, two relating to the production of water for reutilisation in agricultural activities and the other evaluating the risks of forest fires to the water supply and sanitation infrastructures.