“The Spanish metal- mechanical sector is currently in seventh position, behind Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and Poland” / INTERVIEW Firstly, I would like, as a business What means have they access to and what confederation, you to position Spain’s metal- welcome has it had among the companies? How mechanical industry within the international many are part of this platform and who are the context... What position does it hold and what technological partners? level of technological use would you highlight? The PTEMM will perform its activity structured into different According to my numbers, extracted from the Competitive- constituted Work Groups such as specialised forums, of a ness Study of the Industrial Automation Sector in Spain, cross-sectional nature (by manufacturing technology), as performed in 2011 within the framework of the AVIVA well of a vertical dimension (by sector-client or market) and Project, within an international context, the Spanish metal- mechanical sector is currently in seventh position, behind Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and Poland. It is comprised of about 15,000 companies which generate an annual turnover of about 45,000 million Euros and 375,000 jobs. On an international level, the importance of the Spanish metal-mechanical sector is reducing year on year due to the growing deindustrialisation within our country. What type of companies are we talking about? (large corporations, SMEs and micro-SMEs...) We are mainly referring to SMEs and micro-SMEs. This factor is of great importance and should be taken into consi- deration in all initiatives related to the improvement of competitiveness of this sector’s business structure. We point out the need for innovating and internationalising the companies but, with a structure which is comprised of so many micro companies, these first need to prepare themselves for this and consolidate their size, integrating capacities by means of investment or cooperation. From Confemetal, you are promoting PTEMM, the Spanish technological platform of the Metal-mechanical sector. What is this and what is its main objective? The first thing we need to consider is that the Spanish Technological and Industrial Platform of the Metal-mechanical Sector (PTEMM) is actually a network for cooperation, with the main objective of promoting, generating and transferring technology to the companies within the Metal-mechanical sector, SMEs and micro-SMEs, by means of imple- menting innovation projects which generate own products or components, which are required by the large companies from the different sectors-client. The fundamental vision which has led to the creation of PTEMM is as follows: if we manage to group all of the agents: driving force companies, technological agents, financial entities and sector institutions surrounding the sector’s SMEs in order to facilitate the launch of a new product on the international market, we will be capable of transforming companies within our sector, which will then grow and, in turn, generate new opportunities within their surroundings. / 23