Spain is reinforcing its commitment to business projects that promote sustainable mobility. To this end, the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Tourism, under the Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) for Electric and Connected Vehicles (VEC), has granted a subsidy of 53.8 million euros to the company InoBat to construct a battery gigafactory in Valladolid. The Slovak company plans to invest a total of 712 million euros in this infrastructure.

As part of the third call for proposals under the battery section of the PERTE VEC, the project has also been granted a loan of 456,000 euros. InoBat estimates that its gigafactory will generate 260 direct jobs and around 500 indirect jobs. By 2027 it plans to reach an output of 32 gigawatt-hours, and it aims to reach full capacity by 2029.

Declaration of intent
In October 2022, InoBat signed a declaration of intent with the Spanish authorities to construct this new plant. The city council of Valladolid, the Regional Government of Castile and León and the Spanish Ministry of Industry thus expressed their support for the choice of Valladolid over other possible strategic locations that the company was considering in the United Kingdom as the site for its gigafactory in Western Europe.

The Slovak company, which specialises in R&D, engineering, production and recycling of premium batteries for electric vehicles, considers the Castilian capital to be very attractive due to its wealth of talent, access to renewable energy, proximity to other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and excellent transport links.

Together with the company’s plant in Slovakia and the plant announced in Indiana (United States), the plant in Valladolid represents a new step in the company’s plans to create a network of battery production plants for electric vehicles around the world.

Strategic projects
The third call for the PERTE VEC has distributed over 408 million euros to various industrial projects for manufacturing electric vehicle batteries. Along with InoBat,  strategic projects by PowerCo in Sagunto (Valencia), Stellantis in Figueruelas (Zaragoza) and Renault in Valladolid, to name but a few, have also been selected.

Together with the two previous calls, the PERTE VEC has already allocated around 2.5 billion euros to 300 companies located in 15 autonomous communities and 40 provinces.

^{Photo: Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan}