Galp
The old Galp refinery, in Matosinhos
The competition for the construction of the space engineering hub in Matosinhos will be launched in 2025. The new project is expected to create 300 jobs.
The new space engineering hub at the University of Porto will take place in Matosinhos, and will occupy the location where the aa was located.old Galp refineryin a space of 40 hectares.
The space will have facilities aimed at teaching, research and innovation in aerospace engineering, according to the .
“We count launch the work in the first months of 2026when we will be ready to open design competitions to build the first buildings”, says the vice-rector of the University of Porto, Pedro Alves Costa.
The project will feature 23.5 million euros of European funds of the Just Transition Fund. “It will be the University of Porto that will give meaning and a socioeconomic utility for urban recovery of the hectares of the Galp refinery”, says Pedro Alves Costa.
For now, it is still necessary to decontaminate the soil; “The architecture and engineering design competition” will open in the first quarter of 2025. The rector of UP, Antônio de Souza Pereira, ensures that “the ‘cluster’ of space is strategic in the innovative ecosystem that we are going to create in Matosinhos”.
“In addition to teaching and research, there is a laboratory unit which will be aimed at providing services, and for national and regional companies operating in the space sector”, says the vice-rector.
The new “telecommunications and computational perception laboratory has 15 thousand square meters, dedicated to research, incubation, wireless technology, networks and applications, including sensing technologies, electronics, computing and machine learning”. His name is “Just31 and will integrate 300 jobssome of them in startups”.
And the news doesn’t stop there. “Gondomar will also welcome an extension which will be dedicated to the area of Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Humanities“, says the rector.
There is already a kind of “reserve” of land, says JN, which is why the project is already included in the municipal PDM (Municipal Master Plan), and is part of the “public utility“.
