Roy Avrahami, Head of Innovation & CVC Investment Arm of Ashdod Port Company, has been elected President of the IAPORTS Innovation Committee for the 2026–27 term, by acclamation, at the committee’s third-quarter session on 28 September 2026. It is the first time the presidency of an IAPORTS committee has been held outside Latin America. Rogério Saran, of the Santos Port Authority in Brazil, was elected Vice-President, and Luis Pérez Madariaga, of Indra in Spain, Second Vice-President.
The Innovation Committee is the most active and the most diverse of the three IAPORTS Global Trends Committees, alongside Investment and Decarbonisation. Each quarter it brings port authorities, terminal operators, technology companies and investors together to examine what is actually changing in the industry — automation, port community systems, data standards, artificial intelligence — and what it takes to make those changes work inside a working port.
Executive Statements
Shaul Schneider, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Ashdod Port Company: “This international appointment is an important milestone for Ashdod Port Company and reflects our strategic commitment to leading innovation and technological advancement across the global maritime sector. As Chairman, I am proud to see Ashdod Port extending its international leadership, sharing our operational expertise and investment ecosystem with global port leaders, and strengthening Israel's position as a hub for port technology.”
Nissan Levy, Chief Executive Officer, Ashdod Port Company: “This election acknowledges the work our teams do every day, and a conviction we have held for some time: a port’s responsibility now extends beyond its own quay. For us, international cooperation delivers practical results: improving port operations, implementing technologies, and expanding business opportunities for the port and the innovative companies we work with. We are proud that Ashdod Port represents Israel in this forum, and Roy and the committee will have our full support”.
Roy Avrahami, Head of Innovation & CVC Investment Arm, Ashdod Port Company: “Innovation does not travel well in isolation. It travels when ports open their operations to one another and say plainly what worked and what did not. Latin America and the Middle East have more in common than the map suggests — the same pressure to move more cargo with fewer emissions, the same search for technology that survives contact with a real terminal. My ambition is that the committee produces not only good sessions, but pilots, exchanges between teams and business between the two regions.”
Three regions at the same table
The 2026-2027 board brings together a port authority in the Middle East, the largest port complex in Latin America and a global technology company with port systems deployed across Europe and Latin America - public and private, operator and provider, three regions on the same board.
Raquel Kibrit, Executive Director, IAPORTS: “This is the moment our thesis stops being a thesis. IAPORTS was built on the conviction that the people moving the innovation agenda in ports are spread across regions and across the public and private sides of the industry, and that they rarely sit at the same table. Now a port in the Middle East, the largest port in Latin America and a global technology company chair this committee together. Each of them reads the trends of their own region, and the committee turns that into something our members can use — early enough to act on it. Ashdod chose us before it was comfortable to choose us, and that is the most precise definition of vision I know.”
The three officers will shape the committee’s 2027 programme and the strategic projects that come out of it. The committee’s next session takes place on 17 November 2026.
