Final stretch for Chery’s landing on the former Nissan lands in the Barcelona Free Trade Zone. The Minister of Business and Work, Roger Torrent, travels today to the Wuhu region, in China, to meet with executives of the automobile group with the purpose of reinforcing the negotiations that are being carried out to achieve the agreement with the Asian automobile group .
The conversations to install an assembly plant are quite mature, as different sources in the sector acknowledge to Efe. In this operation, the role of EV Motors, the parent company that owns BTtech engineering, and Ebro, the brand that will produce a large part of the electric vehicles that are planned to be manufactured in the Free Zone, stands out. In recent days, several media outlets have pointed out that executives of these companies have intensified conversations with the Chinese group.
The agreement with the Chinese group guarantees sufficient workload to absorb the around 600 former Nissan workers pending relocation, and who have training contracts until October.
Apart from the meeting with Chery, the head of Empresa i Treball will also hold meetings with other Chinese multinationals in the electric vehicle sector with the aim of positioning Catalonia as one of the most attractive regions in Europe to establish production plants. With 27 million vehicles produced in 2022, China is the first automobile producing country in the world, far above the United States (10 million), Japan (7.8 million) or India (5.5 million).
Sources from the Ministry of Industry yesterday also highlighted the role of Minister Jordi Hereu in the negotiations. In this sense, they recalled that in the first days in office he met with the executive vice president of the Chery group, Charlie Zhang, to convey his support and collaboration so that the project promoted by both companies could go ahead. In this sense, the aforementioned sources were confident that the agreement with Chery will be definitively formalized in the coming days.
The reindustrialization of the old Nissan plant in the Free Zone is not being an easy task. Public administrations have tried to attract investors even before the automobile company ceased activity in December 2021, but these have taken time to materialize. The last chapter was starred by QEV Technologies, a company that was to play a central role in the project and which finally gave up the central role to Btech.
In addition to the EV Motors subsidiary, this hub has managed to secure an agreement with Silence, a subsidiary of Acciona, to install an assembly line for electric mini vehicles. Also with Goodman, who will be in charge of finding a logistics operator.
