The project to build an electric battery factory in Mont-roig del Camp (Baix Camp) announced by the South Korean group Iljin Materials is of a strategic nature to integrate new electromobility technologies into the Catalan automotive cluster. It was a key missing piece.

The aforementioned project involves an investment of six hundred million euros, the creation of five hundred direct jobs –many more indirect– and constitutes the most important industrial commitment made in Catalonia for fifteen years, after Volkswagen in Seat. The project of the aforementioned battery factory, as has now been known, is integrated into the electromobility Perte led by said German multinational, since it appeared with the name of one of its subsidiaries in the initial information.

With this significant investment in new electric mobility technology, the negative impact of Volkswagen choosing Sagunt to build its large battery plant for its electric cars is largely offset. Paradoxically, the Korean Iljin group is also a supplier to the German automotive multinational, as well as to other manufacturers in the sector, in addition to other companies in the railway, airline, energy and robotics industries. It will be the third plant of the group outside of South Korea and from Catalonia it plans to supply national manufacturers and the rest of the continent involved in the electrification of their processes.

The construction of the aforementioned battery factory in Catalonia is the result of negotiations carried out between the Generalitat and the Iljin group over the last seven months. They are negotiations that have been developed within the maximum reserve, in charge of the Minister of Business and Employment, Roger Torrent, because the Catalan location competed with other areas of Europe. Finally, the South Korean group chose to settle here. The Generalitat has known how to value well the strengths of Catalonia. It must be admitted that the attraction of the aforementioned investment, in a sector that is so strategic for the future of the Catalan automotive industry, is the first great success of industrial policy that the Government has scored after a few long years in which it seemed that it did not exist. This is a line of action that should be reinforced. The aforementioned investment will help this, since it will become a pole of attraction for new initiatives. Welcome, then, to the Iljin group in Catalonia.