The future of electrification can be a clear sector that promotes employment and the development of the automotive and mobility business in Spain. There are many companies that have set to work in this aspect and little by little they are reaching government agreements to promote the manufacture and production of batteries. Andthis is the case of PowerCo, battery company of the Volkswagen group and the Generalitat Valenciana, who have signed a collaboration agreement in the plant that is scheduled to be located in Sagunto.
On July 21, an agreement was signed in the Gothic courtyard of the Palau de la Generalitat where a principle of agreement was reached in the form of a collaboration agreement for the development of the electric vehicle battery gigafactory project which will be located in Sagunto.
This project is part of the Future: Fast Forward (F3) campaign where Volkswagen and Seat S.A. they hope to drive the transformation in Spanish industry towards electrification. In this agreement they have stipulated the technical requirements of the plant, the administrative processes, environmental and urban plans and legal requirements necessary for its start-up.
According to Ximo Puig, this project will have a training center that hopes to meet all the demand that the gigafactory will generate: “the new training center will have an investment of EUR 15 million, orwill cover a plot of 20,000 square meters next to the battery factory in Sagunto and will be oriented to the training of young people so that later they can work in it”.
Sebastian Wolf, Chief Operations Officer (COO) of PowerCo, explained that “With Salzgitter as the main plant, Valencia will be the first full deployment of our new standard factory concept. It will maximize economies of scale, as well as interchangeability between production lines globally. In addition, it will help reduce start-up times from 36 to 18 months. For PowerCo, the unified cell and standard factory are the two key success factors for rapid commissioning and global competitiveness.”
The Valencia plant will play an essential role in the Volkswagen Group’s electrification plan, and will be the Group’s first own gigafactory located outside Germany. The Volkswagen Group plans to invest more than 3,000 million euros in the gigafactory, which will cover an area of 200 hectares.
