Órbita Ingeniería S.L. is looking to expand into Latin American markets this year as demand for its automation technology and engineering solutions in the region continues to rise.
Francisco Grau Cavanillas, business manager for ports and terminals at Orbita (right), told PTI that preparing to branch out into Latin America is one of the company’s main objectives for the year as ports and terminals throughout the region ready themselves for the completion of the Panama Canal expansion project, and the larger vessels transiting the waterway as a result.
“We see rising interest in Latin America for this kind of automation solutions, and it is our goal to be ready for this market when it starts developing this year,” said Cavanillas.
“In fact in some countries there are ongoing automation projects already and we expect a rapid growth of the number of terminals considering automation projects in the next 12 months.”
Away from Latin America, Cavanillas believes that the coming year is equally important for Órbita closer to home. In Europe the company is now looking to consolidate its already strong presence in the port and terminal automation market, where Cavanillas believes its success has been driven by the company’s unique engineering approach.
“This approach to the port and terminal automation market is based on a concept that provides global engineering solutions well beyond OCR, container identification, or any particular technology,” he explains.
“We see that clients listen and are interested in our solutions because we provide an engineering know-how that covers all aspects of the automation project, whether this is electrical, communication or process design, mechanical engineering etc.”
“We feel the market in Europe is mature and is adopting these new concepts of automated operation not only at the gate, but in other terminal processes such as STS cranes and yard management applications.”
“Some of the biggest ports and terminals in Europe have already installed automation systems, and medium sized terminals have started and will continue improving their processes during this year and the next.”
Órbita Ingeniería S.L. is PTI’s preferred gate automation engineering partner for 2014.