Bon Preu will invest 50 million in a logistics center in Montblanc

The family group of supermarkets and hypermarkets Bon Preu will invest 50 million euros in a new logistics center in Montblanc (Tarragona), which will create 470 direct jobs. To carry out the project, the company has acquired for 15.4 million euros the first two plots that have been put up for sale in the future Logis Montblanc area, a logistics platform with a possible future railway connection managed by the public company Cimalsa.

The Bon Preu supermarket chain, which has carried out the operation through the company Gesdip, will have 188,000 square meters of surface area between the two plots to centralize the logistics that will serve its establishments in Tarragona, Lleida, and Aragon.

The new center will complement the one the company has in Hostalets de Balenyà (Barcelona). Once the construction of what will be its second platform is finished, presumably by the end of 2022, when the urbanization of the first phase of the industrial park will also have been completed, with a planned investment of 15 million euros by Cimalsa.

Grupo Bon Preu, owner of the brands Bonpreu, Esclat, EsclatOil, BonpreuEsclat Online, and the company BonpreuEsclat Energía ---which it launched in 2020---, invoiced 1,625 million euros (net sales without VAT) during the 2020 financial year, after registering a 9% annual sales growth. The company, owned by Joan Font, has its headquarters in Les Masies de Voltregà (Barcelona) and employs 8,900 professionals ---of whom a thousand joined last year---. For this 2021, it announced investments of 150 million euros in new openings, after ending 2020 with 133 Bonpreu supermarkets and 58 Esclat hypermarkets.

Grup Bon Preu was the only company that submitted an offer to buy the land assigned to it within the future Logis Montblanc, where two-thirds more land will remain available for Cimalsa to continue marketing. With a total of 356,000 square meters and nearly 39,000 square meters for tertiary activities, the logistics park will have a photovoltaic plant to make it totally sustainable, a plan for which Cimalsa awarded the company Energies Renovables Terra Ferma the long-term lease of the land adjacent to Logis Montblanc.

The new logistics platform in Conca de Barberà ---one of the largest investments made in the region in the last ten years, according to the Generalitat--- will also have a future railway station.

The announcement of the operation was made by the Vice President of the Government and Minister of Digital Policies and Territory, Jordi Puigneró, during a visit to Montblanc, who described it "as a great step" for the "economic reconstruction of the Conca de Barberà region and neighboring regions". "We are talking about generating employment, the best possible social policy," concluded Puigneró.