Biggest wood multinational to invest €180m in southern Catalonia

The Austrian multinational Kronospan will invest €180 million in Tortosa, southern Catalonia. The company specializes in sustainable wood-based panels for furniture and will set up a plant in the Ebre river region, which has never received such a level of investment before. With the outlay, around 180 new jobs will be created.

The business minister of the Catalan government, Roger Torrent, noted that Kronospan exemplifies the kind of investment that Catalonia seeks in order to reindustrialize the country with projects “rreaching towards the future, with a drag effect and that stretch other productive sectors which are socially, economically and environmentally sustainable, and generate stable and quality employment”. “Such investments give new life to the local productive network and allow people to live far away from the biggest cities”, said Torrent.

Kronospan first launched in 1897 and has factories in 40 countries worldwide, employing 14,500 people. “By producing wood-based panels using wood residue from the sawmill industry, we help to ensure that timber is valued as a limited raw material,” their website reads. “For us, setting high environmental standards comes naturally. A leader in technical development, we aim to get the highest possible yield from our input materials. The result is cost-effective production with the lowest environmental impact possible.”