Latest Arrivals & Company News
Bluetab, a Spanish big data company part of the IBM group, announced it will open a talent hub in Malaga before the end of 2023 with intentions to hire 200 new employees from the area over the next three years. Bluetab, which was acquired in 2021 by IBM to strengthen its leadership in data analytics in Europe and Latin America, considers that "access to the best technical talent is crucial" as part of its growth plan. Kadans Science Partner, a Dutch firm, acquired a plot of land in the Malaga TechPark to build an Innovation and Transfer Centre to host companies and institutions dedicated to R&D&I in particular in the fields of artificial intelligence, cyber-security and connected vehicles, among others. Founded in 1997, Kadans Science Partner is the European leader in the management of open innovation centres and has more than 35 buildings spread across 25 technology parks and university campuses in the Netherlands, the UK, France, Belgium and Germany. SaberTech, an international software development company opened its first office in the heart of the Malaga city centre. The company was founded in 2022 and currently employs more than 130 experienced technical experts in Spain, Slovakia and the UK. The Norwegian Government Global Pension Fund, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, has continued to raise its stake in Unicaja Banco to 4.435%, since it began investing in 2018, as reported to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).They are the 6th largest shareholder in the bank, behind Unicaja Banking Foundation (30.236%), Oceanwood (7.412%), Caja de Ahorros de Asturias Banking Foundation (6.560%), Tomás Olivo (5.178%) and Indumenta Pueri (4.435%). In the 2023 LinkedIn Top 25 Companies in Spain to boost your career, EPAM Systems, a U.S. company that specializes in software engineering services and which opened in Malaga in 2018 and exceeded 1,000 employees in 2022, finished 2nd behind Amazon. The list is compiled from LinkedIn's proprietary data that assesses different aspects of career development and includes other companies with a strong presence in Malaga such as Indra (7), Santander (8), Ericsson (18) and Oracle (22). Cesur, the Southern European Superior Training Centre, will open a new vocational training centre in Malaga this September with the capacity to accommodate more than 5,000 students. The new centre (8,500 m2), located in the Teatinos neighborhood, will include classrooms, laboratories, a professional kitchen and gymnasium. OPPLUS, which has more than 2,500 employees in Malaga, has opened a training campus (750 m2, with a capacity for 400 users) in the Malaga TechPark that offers sixty subjects and will use the metaverse to create a complete experience in remote training.
Malaga at a Glance
Mayor Francisco de la Torre Prados was re-elected for an unprecedented 6th timeon May 28 in the municipal elections and then the President of Spain decided to call national elections early to be held on July 23.
For the 2nd month in a row, Malaga recorded the highest hotel occupancy rate of any large Spanish city (with more than 500,000 inhabitants) in May with an 89% occupancy rate, according to the Hotel Occupancy Survey published monthly by the National Statistics Institute. Malaga is ahead of Valencia (86.35%), Barcelona (85.33%), Seville (81.42%), Madrid (78.31%) and Zaragoza (65.95%). 67.5% of the overnight stays were made by travellers residing outside of Spain. Spain´s bid to host a specialised Expo in Malaga in 2027 came to an end on June 21 when members of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) selected Belgrade, Serbia. Malaga finished 2nd and a mere 11 votes behind Belgrade. The year-long campaign, fully supported by the central, regional, provincial and municipal governments, provided tremendous international exposure to the incredible cultural and technological transformation that Malaga has experienced during the last 20 years and helped define a sustainable strategic plan for the future of the City.
Economic Data
Malaga reached a new all-time high in employment in May and is now close to 700,000 registered workers. The level of unemployment is the lowest since 2008 with 3,322 fewer people in unemployment than a month ago and 10,218 fewer than a year ago. GDP this year in the Malaga province will increase by 2.2%, above the Andalusian (1.3%) and Spanish (1.4%) averages, but at a lower rate than in 2022, according to forecasts published by Analistas Económicos de Andalucía, part of the Unicaja Group. Malaga has broken its all-time record for exports with 530 million euros in sales and has become the province with the highest growth in the months of January and February 2023, with an increase of +39% compared to the same period last year. It is 8% of the Andalusian total and is very close to trade balance with a slight deficit of -4.7 million euros according to data from the regional agency, Extenda. Home rental prices increased by 24.4% in the City and 21.5% in the province compared to the April of last year, reaching record values of more than 12 euros/m2, according to the real estate portal, Idealista. Malaga was the province where most companies were incorporated in March with 36.9% of the total in Andalucia, followed by Seville (24.3%) and Cadiz (9.9%). Andalusia's mercantile registries recorded 14.3% more new companies last March than in the same month of the previous year. Specifically, 2,214 entities were incorporated with a combined capital of 88.8 million euros which was 41.9% higher than in the same period of 2022.
Connectivity
United Airlines´ inaugural direct flight from Newark / New York landed at the Malaga-Costa del Sol international airport on June 1st full of tourists, business people and students eager to discover everything Malaga has to offer.
Finnair, celebrating 100 years of bringing people together, will operate a double daily flight this summer between Helsinki and Malaga-Costa del Sol airport, making it the airline´s Spanish destination with the most operations. With the arrival of 2 new operators: AVLO (from Renfe) and the private Iryo together with the original AVE (from Renfe) this summer Malaga will have 18 daily high-speed trains to Madrid. Fares have been reduced and seats are available from 34 euros.
Malaga TechPark
Guamar began construction on the first of the office buildings planned in the Malaga TechPark expansion. The project will take 16 months to complete with an investment of 6.6 million euros. 41% of the workers surveyed at the Malaga TechPark live outside the City with 12% living west of the city along the Costa del Sol, 10% in the Guadalhorce Valley, 9% in the eastern part of the Costa del Sol and 2% in other towns in the province. 8% live outside the Malaga province, especially in Cadiz and Granada, and even outside Andalusia, mainly in Madrid. The Malaga TechPark recently joined two hydrogen alliances to promote the various methods of creating, storing and processing hydrogen fuel. The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance aims to promote these technologies and is composed of companies, national and local authorities, civil society and other parts of the value chain. The Andalusian Alliance for Green Hydrogen, constituted on March 29 aims to contribute to the decarbonising of the Andalusian economy and strengthen the position of its industry as one of the pillars of Andalusia's "green revolution."
Events
On April 18, the Fintech Forward Summit brought together in Malaga more than 400 attendees and 70 speakers from 60 different companies to discuss the latest trends in the fintech sector such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain DeFi, the Metaverse and Big Data.
The Malaga Silver Economy Hub kicks off its activity with an event on health and finance at the Carmen Thyssen Museum on April 21. The Hub's main objective "is to position the city and province as a national and international leader in the Silver Economy which consists of products and services designed by companies, professionals and public administrations for people over 50. "This group of fifty-somethings currently accounts for more than 40% of the population in Spain and Europe, generating more than 25% of GDP. The co-founding partners of the Hub are the Malaga City Council, the Confederation of Malaga Employers (CEM) and SeniorsLeading. The seventh edition of J On The Beach took place May 10-12 in the Malaga Trade Fairs & Congress Centre and brought together more than 800 software developers, devOps and business executives to listen to 55 international speakers explain the latest trends in Java Virtual Machine, software engineering, Big Data (engineering, data science and visualization), Internet of Things, and microservices in the cloud.
Nearly 17,000 professionals from 34 countries attended the Digital Enterprise Show (DES) in Malaga from June 13 to 15. This leading international Digital Transformation event provides knowledge transfer, business and networking opportunities for companies and experts in IA, Cloud, Ciberseguridad, Blockchain, Metaverso, Data Intelligence, IoT, Clean Tech y Martech technologies.
Upcoming Events
| July 21-23 |
Gamepolis festival dedicated to the videogame industry |
| July 23 |
Spanish General elections |
| Sept. 20-21 |
GreenCities - Urban Intelligence and Sustainability Forum |
| Sept. 20-21 |
S-Moving - Smart and Sustainable Mobility Forum |
| Nov. 9-11 |
SIMED - Mediterranean Real Estate Fair |
| Nov. 13-17 |
9th edittion of 4KHDR Summit |
| March 20-22, 2024 |
Transfiere - European Meeting on Science, Technology & Innovation |
| June 11-13, 2024 |
Digital Enterprise Show (DES) |
|
|
|
