The Volkswagen Group opts for Sagunto for its battery gigafactory

Neither Catalonia nor Extremadura nor Aragon. The Valencian Community will be the one that hosts the battery gigafactory of the Volkswagen Group. Specifically, Sagunto will be the town where said battery plant is located.

However, sources from the German automobile giant have assured the Economist that “the final decision has not yet been made”. And it is that, as this medium has been able to know, in the multinational they expect the Ministry of Industry to publish the call for the Perte of the Electric and Connected Vehicle (Perte_VEC), in which ministerial sources have assured that it will be published “in the next few days” .

The same sources assure that “the decision depends on different technical, economic and logistical criteria, including the potential support of the Government.” As it progressed today The Automotive Tribunethe new factory could employ 3,500 people.

One of the great assets of Sagunto to be able to house the battery gigafactory is the availability of new industrial land at an affordable price. The Generalitat Valenciana initiated more than a year ago the procedures for the Parc Sagunt II business park, which covers 5.6 million square meters together with the first phase of that estate, today mainly occupied by Mercadona. A project precisely designed to attract investments considered strategic and that require large blocks of land.

To speed up the process, the Valencian Administration directly bought part of these lands and has already begun the expropriations of the rest with the intention of having access to these plots at the end of April. The investment of the Valencian Government for the purchase of these lands reaches 80 million euros, with the advantage that the development of the urbanization can also be carried out according to the needs of the new Volkswagen facility. For example, the creation of an intermodal railway station with direct connection to the Mediterranean Corridor was already planned in the enclosure, in addition to having the advantage of its proximity to the port of Sagunto.

The Valencian Government has been insisting for months that work is being done to attract a facility of this type, which would also help clear Ford’s doubts about producing electric cars in Almussafes and guarantee its continuity. However, officially the Generalitat remains silent and insists that it is a decision that Volkswagen has to make.

Attendance at Perte

Once the Government presents the call for Perte, the first step that Seat, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, and the German consortium will take will be to present their candidacy.

This proposal will include everything from the manufacture of battery cells to the production of electric vehicles in the factories of Martorell (Barcelona) and Landaben (Pamplona). This was confirmed by the CEO of the Volkswagen Group, Herbert Diess, at the presentation of the planning round for the 2025-2030 period last December.

However, Diess himself recognized at the IAA Mobility in Munich that the Seat factory would be in charge of manufacturing the models of the Small BEV family of Cupra and Skoda, the Cupra being the first of them.

In the case of the Navarra factory, which currently produces the Polo, T-Cross and Taigo models, the latter two could be manufactured in their fully electric version. The director of Volkswagen Navarra, Markus Haupt, confirmed in a meeting with the media last November that the Landaben factory will need between “about four and five years” to fit the electric vehicle.

These investments have remained in the air because the group has always made government incentives a condition, in reference to the automotive Perte.

This way, Spain will be the third country to have a Volkswagen Group battery plant. The first gigafactory that the German automobile consortium has already confirmed will be located in Sweden and will be operated by Northvolt, after an investment of 500 million euros. Said factory is scheduled to start production in 2023. The second location to house a gigafactory by the German automobile giant will be Salzgitter (Germany), after having signed an agreement yesterday with the technological partner specializing in the manufacture of cells Gotion High- Tech, which is expected to start production in 2025.