Puertos del Estado and 15 Spanish port authorities will participate from October 6 to 8 in Fruit Attraction, in Madrid, with an agenda focused on maritime connectivity, cold chains, digitalization, and intermodality applied to the international transport of fruits and vegetables.
The joint presence of the Spanish port system arrives in a context of high volume of horticultural goods channeled through general interest ports. During the first eight months of 2026, 7.98 million tons of fruits and vegetables were moved, while in the whole of 2025, 10.26 million tons were reached.
The president of Puertos del Estado, Gustavo Santana, has stated that participation in Fruit Attraction will allow presenting the capabilities of the port system to meet the logistical needs of international trade in fresh products, a traffic conditioned by transit times, the maintenance of the cold chain, traceability, and controls over preservation conditions.
Fruit Attraction will bring together this year more than 2,500 exhibitors and is expected to receive more than 121,000 professionals from 150 countries. The fair focuses on producers, logistics operators, marketers, distributors, and technology companies related to the fruit and vegetable sector.
Puertos del Estado will coordinate a joint space of 215 square meters under the brand Ports of Spain and the slogan 'Moving the best of nature.' The port authorities of Alicante, Bay of Algeciras, Bay of Cádiz, Barcelona, Bilbao, Cartagena, Castellón, Huelva, Las Palmas, Málaga, Motril, Seville, Tarragona, Valencia, and Vigo will be represented there.
The delegations will hold work meetings with companies and professionals in the sector during the three days and will present their refrigerated storage infrastructures, maritime connections, and services aimed at managing perishable goods.
The agenda will begin on Tuesday with an intervention by Gustavo Santana in the Ports of Spain space scheduled for 1:00 PM. A day later, on Wednesday at 11:00 AM, the president of the Port Authority of Valencia, Mar Chao, will present at the same stand the logistical proposal of Valenciaport for the traffic of fresh products.
On that Wednesday, at 12:00 PM, the Fruit Next 4 space of pavilion 4 will host the round table 'Innovation in the cold chain: the strategic role of ports,' organized by Puertos del Estado.
The meeting will be moderated by Pedro García Navarro, director of Operations of Puertos del Estado, and will include Andima Ormaetxe, Director of Operations of the Port Authority of Bilbao; Jaime Manuel Beltrán, Head of the Business Development and Commercial Area of the Port Authority of Huelva; and Ignasi Sayol, CEO of Inprous. The debate will be focused on infrastructures, cold chain, and solutions applied to international trade.
Puertos del Estado places connectivity among the main assets of the Spanish system. According to the agency's data, Spain holds the first European position in maritime connectivity and has over 200 connections with ports from different countries.
State port infrastructures sum nearly 100 million square meters of land surface and storage areas, more than two million cubic meters of refrigerated warehouses, and almost 395,000 linear meters of docking. These facilities include connections for refrigerated containers and technological systems aimed at controlling temperature during the storage and transport of goods.
Digitalization is another of the areas included in the offer that Puertos del Estado will present at the fair. Among the available tools is DUEPORT, the single port window used to centralize the exchange of information and the processing associated with vessel calls, which is being adapted to the environment of the European Maritime Single Window, EMSWe.
The system also includes INTEGRA2, aimed at the internal management of processes among systems and port actors, and SIMPLE, a logistics information exchange platform designed to facilitate interoperability, traceability, and coordination among the various participants in the transport chain.
These solutions include VUAPORT, an application aimed at managing positions and inspections at Border Control Posts and coordinating processes associated with the control of goods at the border. This type of procedure has a particular impact on perishable products subject to sanitary and phytosanitary controls.
Port activity related to refrigerated goods is also linked to the electrification projects of the docks. State ports are working on the deployment of OPS systems, Onshore Power Supply, that allow supplying electricity from land to vessels while they are docked, avoiding the use of their auxiliary engines during the stay in port.
Puertos del Estado also includes among its lines of action the production and distribution of fuels with a lower environmental impact and the supply of liquefied natural gas to vessels, along with the infrastructures associated with the energy transformation process of maritime transport.
The connection between the ports and the railway completes the logistics offer presented at Fruit Attraction. Maritime-rail intermodality allows transporting goods between port terminals and their inland destinations through transport chains that seek to reduce transit times and facilitate the movement of refrigerated foods and other perishable products.
