It is a long way back to when Nissan announced its decision to close its Free Trade Zone plant, the last one it had in Europe. It was in the midst of the first wave of the pandemic, at the end of May 2020. After many comings and goings, an end was put to a story that had begun in the late seventies, leaving in the air the future of the nearly 3,000 factory workers and the 20,000 employees of auxiliary industries. Almost three years have had to pass for the administrations to find a solution that allows the plant to be reindustrialized and the workforce of the Japanese multinational to be maintained. "The final result is positive: no one is 100% satisfied and no one is 100% dissatisfied. When there are so many parties working, it is the best possible result," defended Pere Navarro, special delegate of the State in the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB), the owner of the land occupied by the automaker.
This Monday, the agreement between the Government, the Generalitat, the CZFB, Nissan and the unions was staged, achieved after a negotiation table was set up in September 2020 to find a solution after Nissan's departure. "Today is a historic day," agreed the Minister of Industry, Reyes Maroto, and the Minister of Business and Labor, Roger Torrent. The consensus was reached after more than thirty meetings in which a total of 17 projects were analyzed, adding delays and setbacks, especially the withdrawal of the Chinese automotive giant Great Wall Motors, the great favorite to replace the Japanese multinational.
The new stage in the Nissan lands will be carried out by the Goodman group and the D-Hub mobility hub, made up of a group of companies led by the Catalan QEV and Btech, which want to promote the Zeroid brand of electric industrial vehicles and recover the Ebro brand. Although the vehicles will be produced by the hub, the land has been formally awarded to Goodman, an Australian logistics operator. "We have a great opportunity that becomes a great responsibility," said the CEO of QEV Technologies, Joan Orús. The main one will be to employ all the workers that Nissan occupied, although for now it is far from being achieved and there is talk of "maximizing the workers to be hired."
According to Nissan's substitutes, vehicle manufacturing will resume in early 2024, after dedicating this 2023 to setting up an infrastructure that has been out of operation for over a year. Around 600 workers are expected to be hired this year, a figure that represents less than half of the former employees of the Japanese multinational who are still pending relocation. Unions quantify them at more than 1,200 workers, whose unemployment benefits will run out at the end of 2023, two years after Nissan definitively ceased its activity in Barcelona. Of those originally affected by the closure, there are those who have retired and those who have left the company with severance pay of 60 days per year worked. There are also those who have already been hired by Silence, another of the companies replacing the automaker in the Zona Franca, where it plans to manufacture small electric vehicles.
Given the plans of the electromobility hub, unions are asking for formulas to increase hirings, either through reduced working hours or by internalizing tasks previously carried out by subcontractors, such as maintenance and cleaning. "Hiring will start right away. It's a first step," defended Sigen-Usoc spokesperson, Miguel Ruiz. The union representative indicated that between 30 and 50 vacancies will open in the coming days, although he warned that overall hiring will be slowed down by the delays that the reindustrialization table has been accumulating: "It has been a difficult process for everyone."
The objective of the D-Hub mobility hub is to hire all workers pending relocation by the end of 2024. It plans to mobilize 300 million euros in the first three years of activity, and the administrations have shown their full confidence in the project, despite not having obtained all the guarantees to access European funds from the PERTE for electric vehicles. QEV and Btech aspire to manufacture 60,000 vehicles in 2026, with the ambition that the Zeroid and Ebro brands become international benchmarks. In addition, the option of ceding the facilities to other brands is contemplated, with some already interested, taking into account that the total capacity of the factory is 180,000 vehicles per year. For the 20,000 indirect jobs that depended on Nissan, it will be necessary to wait until the new occupants of the Zona Franca plant have enough strength to reactivate the industrial fabric.