New investment by AkzoNobel in Catalonia and, specifically, in Vilafranca del Penedès (Barcelona). The Dutch company will invest 32 million euros to open a metallic packaging factory. The new center is expected to be operational by mid-2025, and its opening will lead to the creation of 40 jobs.
The new factory will be built next to the multinational's current production plant, where 140 people currently work. The center will export to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and the material it produces will be mainly for beverage cans. With a particularity: it will not contain bisphenols, which include BPA. This substance is the one that has been most used over the last three decades, explained the Production Director and coordinator of AkzoNobel Iberia, Sergio Olivas.
"The investment demonstrates our commitment to the future of the metal packaging industry, and is fully in line with our view that bisphenols are no longer necessary to create safe coatings for the metal packaging industry," he added. The plant, which represents a "strategic step" for AkzoNobel, will be highly automated and will reduce its carbon footprint by up to 26% compared to the technology currently used.
This investment adds to AkzoNobel's recent 14 million investment to relocate the production of paints for the automotive sectors to the Zona FrancaOlivas announced the opening together with the Minister of Business and Labor of the Generalitat, Roger Torrent, in an act in which he symbolically laid the first stone of the new center. Torrent defended that AkzoNobel's project in Vilafranca represents an example of "Catalonia's will to explain to the world where it is going: a modern, highly technological, sustainable, and environmentally friendly industry". The minister has maintained that Catalonia is eminently industrial, although he has advocated for "industry to have even more weight in the economic structure of the future," as it generates quality jobs, stability, and social cohesion.
The multinational, which has had the support of the Govern through ACCIÓ for this project, currently has 1,140 workers in Catalonia, distributed in its plants in Vilafranca, El Prat de Llobregat, Vallirana and the Zona Franca of Barcelona. The 40 new workers in Vilafranca will join the 32,000 that AkzoNobel has in the 150 countries where the multinational is present.
This investment adds to the one recently carried out to relocate the production of paints for the automotive sectors to the Zona Franca. This project, announced in July, has led to the creation of 80 jobs and an investment of 14 million euros, which are added to the 32 that will be allocated to the new factory in Penedès.
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