A former shopping centre in Santarém is being prepared for a very different future. The municipality has agreed to buy the building for €607,000 and plans to use it for a technology and innovation centre, a business incubator and other organisations working in the region.
On its own, that would be a relatively small municipal project. But it sits alongside a much larger investment already underway at the Polytechnic of Santarém.
The €4.86 million Santarém AgroHub is being developed as a centre for research and technology in the agricultural and food industries. It will include new laboratories, a digital hub and 100 hectares of demonstration fields where companies can test technologies before investing in them.
Some of those technologies are very far from traditional ideas of agriculture. The project includes work with artificial intelligence, IoT, intelligent logistics, blockchain-based traceability and technologies for energy and the reuse of agricultural by-products.
The location makes sense. Santarém sits at the centre of one of Portugal’s important agricultural regions, with research institutions, producers and businesses already working around the sector. Instead of trying to create another version of Lisbon’s technology scene, the investment is being built around industries that are already there.
That may be a more useful model for spreading innovation through Portugal.
Technology companies do not always need another office district. In sectors such as agriculture, food production, logistics or energy, access to laboratories, researchers and places where new systems can be tested in real conditions can matter much more.
The Santarém AgroHub is due to be completed after an investment programme running through 2026, while construction procurement is already underway.
Whether these projects ultimately attract companies and keep more skilled workers in the region will take longer to measure. But the infrastructure is starting to appear well beyond Portugal’s two largest cities.
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