Final green light for the electromobility hub in the old Nissan factory in the Free Zone. The Government, Consorci de la Zona Franca, Nissan and the members of the hub have signed this Monday the reindustrialization agreement by which the Australian company Goodman will keep the land under concession and will lease it to the hub, a group of companies that plans to produce electric vehicles at starting in the first quarter of 2024. “Today is a historic day, we successfully completed the reindustrialization process of Nissan, which will allow the continuity of thousands of jobs that were at risk. We are closing a stage and opening another one”, asserted Reyes Maroto, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, who will leave office in a few days to start the campaign for mayor of Madrid.
End point three years after the announcement of the closure, although still with labor unknowns to be cleared up. Because the headings illuminate a solution that will be significantly less than what Nissan represented before the closure. Around May 2020, Nissan decided to lower the blind on the Catalan factory with some 3,000 jobs. The hub will start with around 600, with the desire to hire the 1,000-1,200 former Nissan workers who are still unemployed after early retirement throughout 2024. “From today we are hiring,” said the CEO of QEV, Joan Orús . The unions offer alternatives such as reductions in working hours to employ the largest number of workers in the shortest term, as explained by Miguel Ruiz, representative of the Sigen-SIR Usoc union.
Nobody sees the result as a failure. Along the way, 17 alternatives have remained, such as that of the Chinese Great Wall Motors, the great bet at some point, or the Belgian Punch, both manufacturers. The figures have been getting smaller as the process progressed and the hub became a solution. In fact, the companies that will carry out the project had difficulties presenting the guarantees when they were required to qualify for all the Perte aid granted.
Led by QEV and BTech, the hub plans to manufacture vans with the Zeroid brand and electric vans based on patents from old Nissan models, to be marketed under the Ebro brand. A dozen companies in the sector with complementary projects will participate in the hub. Starting the replacement for Nissan between all the actors supposes about 100 million euros of investment. The plan was allocated 65.23 million euros from the part of the electric car and Goodman has had to lend 30 million to get to the starting point. When the plant is fully operational it will produce 60,000-70,000 vehicles, which is not expected until 2027 or 2028.
Roger Torrent, Minister of Business and Work, has celebrated the resolution to a “complex challenge”. He sees in the hub an important factor in the Catalan industrial future, “we will be vigilant so that all the objectives are met, this does not end here”, he said, with the focus on employment and productive continuity. The idea is that Catalonia continues to be a benchmark for the European automotive industry, he has defended.
“It is a historic moment” has reiterated Pere Navarro, special delegate of the State in the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona. The person in charge has equated the current situation to the industrial pull that the Nissan installation brought about in its day. It has been a “long” process, he has acknowledged. In these years, the road has not been without curves, with up to 28 “very intense” meetings of the reindustrialization table and the fine-tuning of the signed documents “until this Sunday night,” Navarro acknowledged. “Now we have to make everything that is on paper come true, that the vehicles that are planned are manufactured. It is a qualitative leap forward ”, he has warned in any case. “The final result is positive, nobody is 100% satisfied, but nobody is 100% dissatisfied”, he has stated.
To confirm that the process continues as planned, the reindustrialization table will continue to be active, “until all the workers are reinstated,” said Maroto.
Goodman, an Australian real estate and logistics operator, will invest some 500 million euros in adapting the spaces left by Nissan, some 500,000 square meters. The award is for 50 years. In addition to the hub at the Nissan facilities, there is the manufacturer of electric motorcycles Silence, already operational since the summer.
Also present at the event were the Minister of Economy and Hisenda, Natàlia Mas, representatives of the reindustrialization table, Goodman, the electromobility hub and the unions, such as Javier Pacheco, general secretary of CC.OO. of Catalonia.
