IBERDROLA PRESENTS A PIONEERING PROGRAMME TO DRIVE INNOVATION WITH ITS SUPPLIERS

The initiative focuses on three areas: facilitating access to financing mechanisms for suppliers and promoting the joint creation of companies (spin-offs with suppliers) and innovative purchasing from the SMEs.

The Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and IBERDROLA will share best practices in innovative procurement procedures as well as opportunities for co-investment under the INNVIERTE programme.

IBERDROLA has launched an Innovation with Suppliers Programme that aims to promote and accelerate the development of new products and services that meet the future needs of the Company and help it to respond to the challenges of the sector.

The Purchasing Director of IBERDROLA’s Generation, Renewables and Networks Businesses, Begoña Ochoa, and the Company’s Director of Innovation, Environment and Quality, Agustín Delgado, presented this initiative in Madrid with María Luisa Poncela García, Secretary General for Science, Technology and Innovation of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and Luis Carlos Cueto Álvarez de Sotomayor, deputy director general for the Promotion of Business Innovation of this public body.

IBERDROLA’s programme focuses on three areas: facilitating access to financing mechanisms for suppliers and promoting the joint creation of companies (spin-offs with suppliers) through its Perseo fund and innovative purchasing from the SMEs of the products or services developed.

For Agustin Delgado, an initiative of these characteristics “gives us the advantage of being able to have cutting-edge solutions that will differentiate us from our competitors, while also making our businesses more efficient.” For her part, Begoña Ochoa stressed that “IBERDROLA is firmly committed to its local partners around the world”, and highlighted that in Spain, the Company made purchases from suppliers valued at almost 1.2 billion euros in 2014.

This initiative will strengthen IBERDROLA’s traction on the business community in the areas where it operates and ratifies its commitment to innovation, an area in which it allocated 170 million euros in 2014 in order to develop smart grid, clean energy and offshore wind energy projects.

The Ministry and IBERDROLA will share best practices in innovative procurement procedures, driving innovation from the demand side, as well as opportunities for co-investment under the INNVIERTE program, which seeks to promote business innovation by supporting venture capital investment in technology-based or innovative companies.

Accordingly, María Luisa Poncela García has emphasized the importance of the partnership between the government and companies in order to create a more innovative country and she noted that, through this pioneering programme, IBERDROLA will be able to help suppliers in their internationalization. Luis Carlos Cueto also emphasized that, with the promotion of public-private partnerships, the factor of uncertainty in the field of innovation will be reduced, which will encourage companies to invest in this field.

In the presentation of the IBERDROLA’s Innovation with Suppliers Programme, three Group suppliers were also represented: Grupo Dominguis, provider of technological solutions in the field of operation and maintenance of energy infrastructures with which the Company has set up the spin-off GDES T4S; Sogecam, which supplies smart meters to the Company; and Inerco, which is implementing two systems to reduce NOx emissions at the Longannet plant in Scotland.