AkzoNobel relocates production to the Free Zone and will create 80 jobs

AkzoNobel group, paint manufacturer with the brands Procolor, Bruguer and Titanlux, bets on its plants in the Zona Franca of Barcelona and Vilafranca del Penedès. The multinational based in the Netherlands has announced an investment of 14 million euros with the aim of relocating the production of paints and coatings for the automotive sector to Catalonia. The project will allow an increase in both production and R&D activity linked to this business area and will lead to the creation of 80 new jobs.

Currently, the Barcelona factory employs 566 workers and, with this new investment, it will become the group's largest production center in Europe for paints for the automotive sector, according to the Departament d'Empresa of the Generalitat, which has supported AkzoNobel in making this decision through ACCIÓ and the Directorate General of Industry.

It should be noted that this is the second major project that this relevant European industrial group has recently activated to reinforce its commitment to Barcelona. At the end of 2021, AkzoNobel announced the creation of a hub to centralize from here the planning and management of all the company's production plants and warehouses throughout Europe, an initiative that already led to the creation of 65 qualified jobs, mainly engineers. Specifically, this center of excellence, called EMEA Planning Hub, coordinates 30 factories and 125 warehouses of the coatings production line for third-party companies.

In addition, in the summer of 2022, AkzoNobel inaugurated the Colour Development Lab in the Zona Franca, a new laboratory dedicated to designing the color formulas applied to plastic parts and components in the automotive sector. This is a new 600 square meter building located in the group's central offices, in which 1.2 million euros were invested.

"The consolidation of development and manufacturing activities for the European automotive market at the Barcelona plant allows us to continue creating synergies to ensure the future competitiveness of our centers, especially in a sector as strategic as automotive in Catalonia," explained Sergio Olivas, head of production at AkzoNobel in Western Europe. According to the executive, "this commitment is an important lever to continue creating qualified jobs within the operations and product development areas in the chemical sector" and he points out that "the transfer of products allows us to continue helping to create a business and local ecosystem that fosters innovation and development."

In parallel, the Minister of Business and Labor, Roger Torrent, highlighted that "investments like AkzoNobel's demonstrate why Catalonia is one of the leading territories in Europe in the field of chemistry and automotive." "The project to relocate automotive paints to the Zona Franca is an example of the type of investments we want to promote from the Government: projects that reindustrialize Catalonia with criteria of sustainability and circular economy."

With a commercial presence in more than 150 countries, AkzoNobel has two factories in the Zona Franca —where 566 people work—, one for industrial paints in Vilafranca del Penedès and another for powder coatings in Vallirana. The factories produce coating paints, powder paints, decorative paints, or those applied in the automotive or aerospace sector, among others. In total, it currently has 1,140 employees in Catalonia, where it made a big leap in 2020 by acquiring the decorative paints division of the Catalan company Titan, founded by the Folch-Rusiñol family. Among the brands it manufactures and markets are Procolor, Sikkens, Bruguer, Titanlux, and Xylazel, acquired from PharmaMar.