The Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona has awarded the lease of the land of the Nissan plant to the Australian logistics group Goodman, as reported on Wednesday. The decision will allow reindustrialization to be unblocked after the closure of the factory of the Japanese multinational. Goodman will sublet the space to the electromobility hub project, while Silence has already secured space of its own and has begun recruiting staff from Nissan. Nissan itself will also maintain its own space, a technical center on the premises, with 287 workers.
The signing of the tender is expected to take place next week, the last step to definitively start the activity more than two years after the start of the dismantling of the plant of the Japanese firm. “The candidacy guarantees industrial continuity with a project linked to electric mobility,” the Consorci said in a statement. The hub “will make it possible to relocate the Nissan workforce, which is currently consuming the unemployment benefit, in addition to generating new employment,” it is assured. The hub project has received a total of 65.23 million euros from the Electric Vehicle Perte.
The unions have announced that a meeting is scheduled for this Thursday to “discuss the first incorporations and adopt the necessary measures to speed up and maximize hiring, the intention is to try to make up for lost time in this project award period.”
The allocation of the space has been made possible after Goodman and the promoters of the hub reached a definitive agreement. On the one hand, the industrial orientation of the project is guaranteed, but at the same time guarantees are introduced so that Goodman can look for other alternatives, both industrial and logistical, if viability problems arise with the hub, a business conglomerate headed by QEV and Btech, and which plans to start manufacturing electric vans and trucks on the patents of the old Nissan models. Subsequently, the range would be expanded with its own products. The initial investment proposed by this group has had to be reduced (Perte had awarded aid for 107 million) due to the impossibility of the hub to obtain the required guarantees. Part 2 that the Ministry of Industry plans to launch this year could be an opportunity to recover postponed projects.
Goodman plans an investment of more than 500 million euros to refurbish the almost 500,000 square meters that Nissan has vacated. With assets under management totaling €38.6 billion and 372 properties under management, Goodman is the largest industrial real estate group listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and one of the largest specialist fund managers listed globally. world. It has more than 960 workers and 26 offices in 14 countries.
“The award to Goodman-Hub of the land in the Free Trade Zone is a very important step in Nissan’s reindustrialization process. The objective: cover jobs, guarantee industrial continuity and do so with projects linked to sustainable mobility”, has highlighted the Minister of Business, Roger Torrent.