Industrial and medical gases manufacturer Messer has inaugurated a new production centre in Estella-Lizarra (Navarra) that will supply its customers in northern Spain. The commissioning of the new facility has involved an investment of 7 million euros. Located on a 14,500-square metre site, it will be used mainly for packaging industrial, food-grade, medicinal and special gases.

The plant will have a production capacity of 250,000 gas cylinders per year. The employment generated in its operation, between direct and indirect jobs, amounts to 25 positions. The building, which will operate on 100% renewable energy, will be licensed as a pharmaceutical laboratory for the manufacture of medical gases and is expected to incorporate additional green hydrogen filling lines in the future.

Growth strategy
Messer Ibérica's general manager, Rubén Folgado, said that the new plant "increases the company's competitiveness and reinforces its growth strategy in the Iberian Peninsula". Its products, he added, are "necessary elements" for many industrial processes "where they offer greater safety, increase efficiency and improve the environmental impact of customers' production processes".

During the inauguration, European Chief Operations Officer Virginia Esly referred to the uncertainties surrounding the market to claim that Messer's European business "continues to prove its resilience", and said, "Our strategy of independence for profitable growth also includes this investment we have just made in Navarra."

A solid development
For his part, group chairman and owner Stefan Messer boasted about the 125-year history of the company, which, he says, is the largest industrial and medical gases company in the world that is not listed on the financial markets. With operations in Europe, Asia and the Americas, it employs 11,500 people. In Spain, in particular, he claims that its development "is solid and its growth is progressing well".

Not surprisingly, Messer celebrated 53 years of activity in Spain last September with the inauguration of the fifth distillate  gas production plant it has built to date in Camp de Tarragona, in which it invested 60 million euros. Its Spanish gas liquefaction and packaging plants are located in Tarragona, Navarra and Alicante.

^{Photo: Messer}