Puerto de Sagunto market to get refrigerated lockers from October
From 1 October, shoppers at the Puerto de Sagunto municipal market will be able to collect their orders 24 hours a day thanks to new refrigerated lockers installed on Calle del Trovador.
Sagunto City Council's Commerce and Markets Department has installed refrigerated lockers at the Puerto de Sagunto municipal market, on the side of the building facing Calle del Trovador (Trovador Street). The new service starts on 1 October and will let shoppers collect their purchases at any time of day, with the guarantee that fresh produce stays properly chilled until it is picked up.
The mechanism follows the same logic as any Click&Collect service: the purchase itself is closed at the market stall first, and only later, whenever suits the shopper, is the order picked up from the locker bank, with no need for the stall itself to be open. All it takes is identifying yourself as a customer on the touchscreen and entering the code linked to your order; from there, the locker bank itself takes care of everything, opening one compartment after another until nothing is left to hand over, with no further action needed from the shopper.
This is not the council's first attempt at the idea: exactly a year ago, in September 2025, the Sagunto town-centre municipal market already introduced an equivalent service, and according to the council it is the good response from that first market that has now led to rolling it out at the port-side market too. With this second installation, both of the town's municipal markets now share the same automated pick-up system, part of what the department describes as a gradual digitalisation drive that could later reach other commercial spaces in town. The two parts of the municipality still have different types of customers: the historic town-centre market, with a more settled clientele, has acted as a technical testing ground for the one opening in the port district, where many shoppers juggle their errands around shift work in the surrounding industrial and port businesses.
The Commerce and Markets Councillor, Natalia Antonino, argues that the move widens the options available to shoppers without giving up the close, personal service the market stalls are known for. According to the councillor, direct buying and product quality remain the backbone of the service, and the lockers are simply an extra option for people who need to collect orders outside normal trading hours. Antonino also places the move within a wider plan to give indoor-market traders more tools to work with, and says the experience with the first lockers shows there is genuine demand for this kind of service.
The Puerto de Sagunto Market Vendors' Association has welcomed the news, saying that having the service in the port district puts it on equal footing with the town-centre market. Traders inside the market itself say the move could persuade people who previously stayed away because of clashing schedules to start buying there, a group that in Puerto de Sagunto includes many residents who work shifts at the industrial estate and other businesses around the port.
For the neighbourhood, the change has an immediate practical upside: anyone finishing work late or juggling family schedules will no longer need to reach the stalls before closing time to avoid missing an order. The lockers stay available round the clock with no staff rota attached, effectively extending the market's working hours at no extra cost to traders or to the council beyond the initial investment in the equipment.
The move comes as the council keeps up a broader push to modernise both of its municipal markets, aiming to slow the loss of customers that many neighbourhood markets are suffering to large supermarkets and online shopping. The fact that the first year of the town-centre scheme passed without any notable problems is, according to the council, the argument that allowed it to extend the service to Puerto de Sagunto without a further trial period. According to Sagunto City Council.