Optimize water management with a project in the Atacama Desert; research new protein sources; leverage the potential of quantum computing, delve into decarbonization; promote a technology that reduces emissions in the rice fields of the Ebro Delta. These are initiatives from multiple fields applied in diverse geographies from a single impulse: Eurecat. The Catalan technology center, which this year celebrates its tenth anniversary, is preparing to face the future with a new strategic plan.
In these ten years, Eurecat has worked with 3,200 companies ranging from large corporations to SMEs, including European projects and various administrations. In total, it has developed more than 15,800 initiatives, and now participates in some 200 large consortium R&D&i projects, both national and international, in strategic areas such as digital, industrial, biotechnological technologies, and sustainability.
"Catalonia has an important fabric of SMEs, and most of them do not have the capacity to have their own R&D department; here, Eurecat can be their strategic technological ally," highlighted the company's general director, Xavier López, alongside the president, Daniel Altimiras. And it is that, given the reluctance of companies to promote new technology-linked proposals due to the risks involved, López warned: "Now, what is risky is not innovating."
Thus, Eurecat acts, in a way, as an external R&D department for third-party companies. From the development of biocompatible plastics to algorithms and AI to detect defects in textile production, to plants for CO2 capture and wastewater reuse, Eurecat continues to develop innovative technologies that have led it to accumulate 230 patents and generate a dozen spin-offs.
To take a new leap in its activity, Eurecat has decided to double its annual investment effort in technological infrastructures. "If you don't have these infrastructures, if you don't have laboratories or pilot plants, it's harder to land these projects," López emphasized. For this reason, while this year they have allocated four million to this area, Eurecat will allocate eight million annually to these investments from 2025 to 2027, totaling 24 million.
This investment commitment by Eurecat is part of its strategic objectives up to 2027, the year in which it aims to reach a turnover of 100 million euros. This will be nearly 30 million more than in 2024, a year that closed with an income volume of 69 million. To grow at this pace, it will also increase its workforce, with the ambition of reaching 1,100 employees also in 2027, 300 more than the 800 professionals it currently has. Eurecat, which operates as a private non-profit entity, has eleven offices in Catalonia, and also has a presence in Madrid, Malaga, and Chile. In fact, the company opened a new office last week precisely in Madrid, in order to get closer to the actors of the economic, business, and innovation ecosystem.
Eurecat's objectives for the coming years do not stop there; they also emphasize consolidating an organization with a modern, highly efficient, and sustainable organizational culture, in an environment that fosters professional development. All with one goal: to consolidate itself as a pole of attraction for expert talent. To this end, it will also focus on its positioning as a leading applied research and innovation center in Europe.
In this regard, Eurecat will continue to strengthen its role among the agents of the innovative ecosystem, with services for companies of all sizes and sectors, which translates the company's impact into the most diverse and transversal areas. For ten years, with a basic objective: to become a key technological partner and an innovation engine for the ecosystem.