Jordi Valls leaves Agbar and signs as general director of Mercabarna

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ordi Valls returns to Barcelona. The former mayor of Manresa (1995-2006), Minister of Labor and Industry (2006) ---in Pasqual Maragall's Government---, and president of the Port of Barcelona (2007-2011) has been appointed general director of Mercabarna, the largest wholesale food market in Southern Europe. In the last ten years, Valls has been away from the Catalan capital, as he has resided abroad holding various high-responsibility positions in the Agbar Group.

When he joined the Barcelona-based company for the integral water cycle management in December 2010, Valls was appointed general director of Bristol Water, Agbar's subsidiary in the United Kingdom. Almost three years later, he moved to Santiago de Chile to take up the position of CEO of Aguas Andinas, the largest drinking water distribution and sanitation company in the country. In 2016, he was assigned to Mexico as the top executive of the French group Suez ---Agbar's parent company---, managing various companies that distributed water to more than ten million inhabitants. For the past year and a half, he was the general director of Suez in North Latin America, a region that, in addition to Mexico, includes Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador.

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Now he returns to the Catalan public sector to lead Mercabarna, a company chaired by Montserrat Ballarín ---councilor for commerce--- and participated by the Barcelona City Council (50.69%), the State (36.79%), and the Generalitat (12.16%). He will replace Josep Tejedo, who has led the management of Barcelona's large central market for the last eight years. From now on, he plans to dedicate himself to consulting.

One of Valls' main missions will be to promote the expansion of Mercabarna, which plans to grow on land owned by the Consorci de la Zona Franca to meet the demand for new square meters requested by current concessionary companies and others interested in establishing themselves in the food hub.

More in the short term, Valls will have to promote the World Capital of Sustainable Food that Barcelona will host in 2021 and where Mercabarna expects to play a prominent role. During his mandate, in November, the Biomarket will also be inaugurated, the first wholesale market for organic food in Spain, one of the great initiatives developed by Tejedo in recent years. According to Mercabarna, in this new stage, great importance will be given to the digitalization of the food complex's infrastructures and to offering concessionaires new services to enhance their competitiveness.

Mercabarna occupies an area of 90 hectares and has more than 700 companies and 7,500 workers.