Pont-Tech e CERFITT

They represent the two aspects of innovation in Valdera, one of the most important areas in Tuscany and throughout Central Italy, from an economic and industrial point of view.  Valdera has centuries of industrial tradition, mainly in the motorbike industry (Piaggio headquarters and production plants) and in the field of mechanics, enhanced in the last few decades by the development and prototype Centre of the medical devices “Innovation Technology for Health”. The presence of laboratories from the Sant’Anna High School of Pisa, focusing on research about robotics and micro-engineering, and laboratories from the University of Pisa, operating in the field of chemistry and new polymer materials made that aspect even richer .

Pont-Tech, a consortium supporting active innovation towards favouring integration between research, companies and markets, was born in 1996 from the joint and equal efforts of 4 Partners, all from different backgrounds, now developed and capable of covering the entire range of important actors in development processes: Local Institutions, University Research, industrial systems, Finance, all equally committed and motivated. Point-Tech actively promotes innovation, it plays a strategic role in supporting competition of the local production system, it favours and promotes the Transfer of Technology.  There are two lines of action across which Pont-Tech works: to simplify the creation of new modern entrepreneurial realities and to support modern processes in existing companies.

In this general picture, Pont-Tech has promoted the creation of a multi-functional infrastructure that it currently handles on behalf of the City of Pontedera, who is the owner: CERFITT (Centro Ricerca e Formazione sull’Innovazione Tecnologica e il Trasferimento della Tecnologia – Research and Training Centre on Technological Innovation and on the Transfer of Technology).  CERFITT has new modern premises and equipment including 30 offices for modern companies, conference and teaching rooms, office logistics, thematic technological laboratories and an extremely advanced Centre for tests and controls (PontLab).  The final objective of the structure is to strengthen the bonds between the production system, the territory and the research system by providing assistance for the creation and consolidation of new hi-tech realities and the development of modern services for management, strategic and technological support.