Immaculate Martinez | Valencia (EFE) industry and technology in this region, which wants to be the center of sustainable mobility and innovation.
A megaproject, that of Sagunto, which is mentioned in almost all public institutional appearances that have to do with economic activity and from which the government of the socialist Ximo Puig puffs up for stability, work and commitment as a “business friendly” territory.
Historical fact as the arrival of Ford
Compared by President Puig to the arrival of Ford in Almussafes in 1976 as a historical fact, the battery plant will transform the entire automobile industry and will create an ecosystem of companies around it in an area with an industrial tradition that experienced the crisis in the steel sector a few years ago. forty years with the closure of Altos Hornos del Mediterráneo.
The project, which from 2026 will supply cells to the Seat de Martorell (Barcelona) and Landaben (Pamplona) plants, has benefited from the favorable attitude of the administration when it comes to streamlining procedures to facilitate, at each step that needs , the needs of the German group.
The plant will create 3,000 direct jobs and will receive an investment of more than 3,000 million euros, according to Volkswagen, which launched the project on March 17, during the fallas week, in an institutional act in which they spoke of a country that wants to become a “hub” of electric mobility in Europe.
The Sagunto project is part of the 10,000 million euro investment program “Future: Fast Forward”, by the Volkswagen Group, PowerCo, its Spanish subsidiary SEAT and 49 partners, and will be the second Volkswagen cell factory in Europe, in addition to from the German company from Salzgitter, whose plant under renovation was visited by the Valencian president at the beginning of the year.
Volkswagen’s bet, a jackpot
The PowerCo company, which will manage the gigafactory of batteries, will move its registered office from Madrid to Valencia and the office already open in the heart of this city has launched the process of selecting personnel for the plant.
The Valencian government sees the battery cell factory as a “jackpot” that will mean the arrival of billions of dollars in investment and the creation of quality employment, as is also expected to come from the amount allocated to the electrification of Ford in Almussafes, now in the transition phase to the new mobility.
If the automotive industry has been the protagonist of the big announcements of recent times, in Castellón the commitment to decarbonization comes from the tile sector and from bp’s HyVal project, which wants to develop up to 2 GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030 to produce green hydrogen.
The STN Cerámica business group has proposed a large logistics center of 1.6 million square meters between La Vall d’Uixò, Xilxes and Moncofa, municipalities in the province.
investment destination
The good business news has not ended at the Volkswagen megafactory. The capital, Valencia, has been chosen by fifteen technology companies in the last year and a half to install their offices, which in total will invest more than 5.4 million euros and generate 888 direct jobs.
Companies such as Taligent, Hyperion, Odoo, Arkhaus Arquitectura, CKS Consulting, Siemens Mobility, Commercetools, Lufthansa, Inoverit, Adaptix Networks, Alpha Rainbow, Bosonit, Urb-it, Principal 33, Apex Group, Hitachi or a subsidiary of Toshiba-Mitsubishi ( TMEIC) consolidate the city as a technological pole in the Mediterranean, according to the investment promotion office created by the City Council and the Chamber of Commerce.
In addition, the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM), a public training center for innovation and entrepreneurship based in Munich, will set up its first headquarters outside of Germany in Valencia. And Deutsche Telekom will open a technology center in the city through its subsidiary T-Systems, responsible for its digitization services.
For its part, Alicante continues to grow as an innovative ecosystem and as attractions for digital nomads, and has the Digital District, a pole of technology companies located on the port’s Poniente quay.
However, in the national field, neither Alicante nor Elche have been able to host state agencies such as the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (Aesia) and the Spanish Space Agency (AEE), for which they submitted their respective candidacies. EFE