Yesterday at startport in Duisburg’s Inner Harbour was an exciting few hours. The so-called ELID was hosted live for the third time by startport and ZENIT GmbH in cooperation with EEN NRW / NRW.Europa.
Hosted by Rim H.M. Stroeks , all participants and viewers were guided through the agenda in a humorous and relaxed manner. Starting with a brief welcome from startport Managing Director Johannes Franke and Benno Weissner of ZENIT GmbH, the program continued with keynotes by Erik Wirsing (DB Schenker) and Philip Evans (The European Freight and Logistics Leaders’ Forum). The focus was, on the one hand, on the importance of startups’ innovative ideas in the logistics industry and, on the other, on supply chain challenges.
After a Q&A session, during which questions from the community were answered, among others, the program continued with an exciting panel discussion. In this context, startport gave a shoutout to this year’s sponsor Business Metropole Ruhr GmbH, whose support made it possible for ELID to take place on this scale. Frank Speer from BMR moderated the panel discussion on “Internationalization” and spoke with Pélagie Mepin-Koebel (Everysens), Bart Takkenkamp (Wuunder) and Theodor Preststulen (Mavisoft) about their expansion into international markets.
Overall, 12 startups filled the categories “Drones & Robotics”, “Sustainable Logistics” and “Supply Chain Resilience” with innovative pitches and managed to present their idea digitally and live in 5 minutes. This meant the matchmaking part could begin at the end of the event without any delay.
A key agenda item and a new feature this year were the corporates Wahl GmbH & Co. Spedition Logistikunternehmen, DIT Duisburg Intermodal Terminal GmbH Trinodales Umschlagsterminal and Wirtschaftsbetriebe Duisburg – AöR. Each of them formulated a call for proposals in advance, the so-called “challenge”, thus giving founders the opportunity to apply to the challenge with their innovation. As Erik Wirsing would now say: “Be always hungry for innovation.”
The second day—on which corporates and startups were able to get to know each other during the matchmaking part of the event and connect for future projects—also ran smoothly. Now it remains to be seen which exciting collaborations will emerge from the matchmaking event. And, of course, we can already look forward to a happy reunion next year!