Freight transport and logistics are one of the pillars of our economy. During the unprecedented responses triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the logistics sector once again demonstrated its vital importance, ranging from ensuring delivery of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) and vaccines to food for vulnerable groups. While facing significant disruptions from closed borders and lockdowns, the sector has shown great resilience and efficiency.

The success of today’s logistics sector has benefited from decades of EU investments in research and innovation advancing innovation in the logistics sector through various Framework Programmes.

The newly funded project BOOSTLOG will look at the impact of freight transport and logistics EU funded research to support competitiveness and address the climate challenge.

“BOOSTLOG will transform European freight transport and logistics research and innovation ecosystem as it will have a direct impact on how selected investment can contribute to EU policy objectives, as well as companies sustainability and competitiveness” – said Dr Eusebiu Catana, Senior Manager at ERTICO.

For 3 years, the project will:

  • summarise key results and outcomes from more than 160 EU funded R&I projects and make them available and accessible;
  • develop and implement a strategy to overcome barriers for deployment of EU funded R&I projects, thus accelerating the innovation uptake by for example, creating and Innovation Marketplace;
  • identify and prioritise R&I gaps in logistics research for today’s and tomorrow’s needs to be addressed by funding programmes (e.g. Horizon Europe);
  • facilitate knowledge exchange on best practices in government funding in R&I in the logistics sector at regional, national, and European level;
  • and reach out and engage with more researchers and companies to participate in future R&I projects and valorise previous results.

“Achieving a seamless integration and harmonisation of transport modes building a truly integrated freight transport and logistics system is instrumental to deliver on key EU Priorities, namely: the Green Deal, an Economy that Works for People, A Europe fit for the digital age and to make a stronger Europe in the world” – said Fernando Liesa, Secretary General of ALICE.

To demonstrate the value of EU funded R&I projects, the BOOSTLOG consortium will launch a series of awards to mark the success of innovation implementations from EU funded R&I project outcomes.

The project consortium is led by the Alliance for Logistics Innovation through Collaboration in Europe, ALICE, and includes 12 additional partners: R&D (ZLC, TKI DINALOG, ICCS, Fraunhofer IML and TU Delft), government (TKI DINALOG), Industry (HACON, FIT, Fundación Valenciaport), Civil Society (SFC) and Collaborative Networks and Clusters (VIL, CLOSER and ERTICO – ITS Europe).

For more information and to register for the launch event, click here.