2024-12-17 03:15:00
The Dutch dairy company Royal A-ware, which acquired the old Danone factories in Salas a year and a half ago, plans to start mozzarella production at the Salese factory in August 2025, as it announced yesterday during an institutional visit the company which, for the part of the Principality, was led by president Adrián Barbón and was attended by the company’s managers, including its CEO, the Dutch Jan Anker.
Through its Spanish subsidiary A-ware Iberia, the multinational will invest a total of 100 million euros in the plant over three years, said the company’s financial director, Antonio Rodríguez. Most of these investments, around 85 million, will be made this year and next. The total amount is more than double that revealed a year and a half ago, when the purchase from Danone took place. At the time, Rodríguez himself had anticipated that the outlay would be around 40 million. To date, the company has obtained more than 37 million in public aid: 34.8 from the Fund to support productive industrial investments (FAIIP) and 2.99 from the Institute for the Just Transition.
Mario Pérez shows some of the products that the factory will make. / Luisma Murias
Royal A-ware’s director of operations in Spain, Ignacio Rivas, highlighted yesterday that “there have been a number of changes in the project that had not initially been taken into consideration, such as issues related to storage”, which raised the investment figure issue and postponed the start-up of the plant by a few months, initially scheduled for April 2025. However, Rivas specified that “the works are going quite well” and that the company expects the plant to come into operation in the month of August. At that point the entire staff will have joined, made up of a hundred workers, twenty more than at Danone.
In fact, some of the former workers of the French group at the Salas factory – which from 1981 until its closure in 2022 produced cheeses and sweets such as, in the last stage, the famous Danonino – will be part of the Royal A-ware project. The Dutch company has already hired 17 people, but the bulk of the hiring will take place between January and October. The profiles required include operators in the dairy sector, food technology experts, laboratory and quality workers or electromechanical maintenance workers. The integration will be gradual, but the company’s goal is that most of the expected one hundred employees will already be on staff by spring.
“Most of the professionals we hire are Asturians who had already settled in the region, and also in Salas, or who were outside Asturias and are returning for this project,” explained Rivas. The manager indicated that some employees will temporarily travel to Holland to learn the production process of the mozzarella that will leave the Salsa warehouse.
External structures of the factory. /LNE
Salad meatballs and pearls
Royal A-ware estimates that the factory will produce around 20,000 tonnes per year of fresh mozzarella balls and pearls, primarily for use in salads, and which will be distributed across hospitality and distribution chains both in Spain and other European countries. Specifically, the plant will produce approximately 160 million balls and three billion beads per year, according to the factory director, Mario Pérez, who was also responsible for the plant when it was owned by Danone, and in which he developed all his professionalism. career.
To make these products, the Dutch company plans to collect 150 million liters of milk per year, mainly from Asturian producers. In fact, the company already started signing the first contracts with local farmers last November.
Yesterday the institutional delegation led by Barbón and Anker briefly visited the factory’s zero plant, where the mozzarella will be processed. The overall design of the new plants was carried out by the Asturian engineering company Impulso, while the machinery was designed by the Asturian company Ingeco and the German Gea group.
Royal A-ware is a Dutch family company with over 3,000 jobs and produces all types of cheese, fresh dairy products (such as buttermilk and liquid yoghurt), cream, milk powder and other dairy products. It has 27 facilities and headquarters in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the United States. Last year it recorded a turnover of 3.3 billion euros.
Barbón stresses that plant closures represent a “solvent alternative”
“The closure of Danone in Salas was experienced as a real tragedy, and today there is a consolidated alternative and a solvent company with some commitment in Asturias, and so there are many other projects in Asturias that are being replaced,” he said the president of the Principality, Adrián Barbón, declared yesterday during his visit to the factory, which Royal A-ware is renovating in the capital of Salsa. To support his thesis, Barbón pointed out that “the closure of Alcoa has caused Windar to take over its land and will generate more jobs than Alcoa had when it closed.”
The Asturian president underlined the “solvency” of Royal A-ware: “It guarantees a huge future for the agri-food sector and its investments demonstrate that Asturias is a land of opportunities.”
Barbón highlighted the creation of jobs in the region (“today there are 18,000 more taxpayers and 15,000 fewer unemployed than five years ago”) and said he was optimistic about the adverse situation facing two leading companies in the community. As regards Duro Felguera, he confided that “it will be able to continue its restructuring process”, and as regards ArcelorMittal, he reiterated that “the Spanish government is respecting its commitment to maintain its aid of 450 million euro” to the multinational steel company.
Sign up to continue reading
#numbers #mozzarella #factory #Salas #addition #jobs #start #August