Pamplona (EFE).- The management of Volkswagen Navarra has informed the company committee of the plant on Thursday that there is no news in relation to the battery cell assembly factory that the unions want to be located within the facilities of the pamplona factory.
This Wednesday, the Government of Navarra, after meeting with the factory management, indicated that Volkswagen Navarra is working on the installation of a battery assembly plant for the electric car that would be located in the Landaben factory itself.
The president of the works council, Alfredo Morales, reminded the media that a week ago the company’s management reported that the battery assembly factory “was a necessary project, attractive for Volkswagen Navarra, but it was a project It didn’t have funding at the moment.
For this reason, “in view of the news that is occurring in the last few hours,” he said, a meeting was held with the management of the plant in which the unions have asked if there is any news to notify the staff “or even to celebrate.”
there has been no change
The management, he added, “has confirmed to us that there has been no change, that everything remains the same, that it continues to ratify that it is a very necessary project for our plant, but that it still does not have financing”.
Morales has stressed that in this matter “we are playing with very sensitive issues”, with industrial projects that affect people, and therefore “this type of thing must be treated with the seriousness that today the management of Volkswagen Navarra is not treating”.
The management of Volkswagen Navarra “should have come out publicly with a statement in case there had been any change, because they had to be aware of the special sensitivity that there is at the moment on this issue,” said Morales, who has made a “criticism expresses” of “this lack of communication policy on the part of the management of the company”.
The chairman of the committee has informed that a meeting is scheduled at the end of the month with the Volkswagen Group in which they want to explain “the importance of an industrial project of these characteristics for our Community beyond the year 2026”, when the adaptation is finished to the electric vehicle.
The committee only wants to talk about certainties
Morales has assured that this new factory, which would cost around 300 million euros, must be financed by the Volkswagen Group. “It is a profitable, viable project that can make our factory bigger” and for this reason the multinational “has to make a decision in this regard. He has done it with SEAT, why not with Volkswagen Navarra”.
Regarding the project to install a factory of this type outside Landaben with private financing from other companies, he pointed out that “officially nothing has reached us, what we know is all through information, rumors”, but “what Now we are interested in reporting certainties, not possibilities or alternatives”.
He has urged all the parties involved to “go in the same direction” so that this project, which would mean the creation of some 500 jobs, goes ahead.
The strategy of the multinational
When asked about the possibility that the multinational is trying to pressure to obtain more financing from the automotive PERTE or the Government of Navarra, or that it is an approach with a view to the next negotiation of the agreement, he acknowledged that “it may be one of the possibilities, that indeed the Volkswagen Group is in a strategy, but from our point of view it is completely wrong”.
In the committee “we are working on certainties” and “the certainty is that today we do not have the guarantee of important projects for our factory and our environment from the year 2026” and also for the “complicated transition” towards the electric car in the years 2025 and 2026.
“The intentions, the strategies, for us remain in the background,” he concluded.
The Government of Navarra will offer investment aid
The president of the regional government, María Chivite, has insisted that the Executive will offer aid for the investment that Volkswagen can make if it installs a battery assembly plant for electric cars in its factory, but has reiterated that it is the multinational that will decide whether to assume or outsource these tasks.
She has indicated this in statements to journalists after a visit to a factory in Marcilla, where she has been asked about the meeting held yesterday with executives of VW Navarra, in which they told her that there is a project to install this battery assembly plant within VW, while the Government transferred the existing fiscal and aid framework to which it could benefit to carry it out.
However, the decision for Volkswagen Navarra to assume these tasks with its own personnel has not been taken and does not have the necessary financing, as the unions of the plant’s Works Council have recalled this Thursday.
In this regard, Chivite has indicated that his government “has always worked hand in hand with Volkswagen to guarantee these investments and employment in our community. In fact, now there is something on the table that there was not four years ago, which is a committed investment of 1,024 million euros” for the electrification of the factory, an amount that does not include the battery assembly plant that the unions want it to be from VW itself and not external.
Chivite: “It is a decision that the group itself has to make”
In yesterday’s meeting, the managers of the plant transferred the project that exists for its location within its facilities, to which Chivite responded with the explanation that “the Government helps all investment projects that come to our community, to the extent of its possibilities, in the financing and in the guarantee of that project”.
“They presented it to us and we told them how far we can go as a Government in that financing they need. But it is a decision that the group itself has to make and that until now was not on the table”, the president acknowledged.
“We told them that we can help them reinforce that internal negotiation that they have to have within Volkswagen so that the battery plant can be done by Volkswagen itself, how much we can help them in terms of financing, you help investment above all, but this It is a decision that the group itself must make ”, he insisted.
It has also broadened its sights, because “in any case, the Government wants this battery plant to come to our Community as a guarantee of investment and employment in the automotive sector”, it has said about the benefit that it would also entail in these two areas that an external provider be in charge of this work but from the Foral Community.