Henkel has announced the investment of 7 million euros for the creation of three new Research and Development (R&D) laboratories in Catalonia. Henkel will incorporate 55 new highly qualified work places in Catalonia that will reinforce the adhesives research line for the electronics and aviation sectors.
The announcement was made today by F. Xavier Mena, the Counselor of Occupation and Enterprise, following a business meeting with the president of Henkel Ibérica, Luis Carlos Lacorte and the Corporate Senior Vice President Adhesive Technologies, Ramón Bacardit.
Investment counsel was provided by Invest Catalonia, the sector for the promotion of investment in the Enterprise and Occupational Department of the Catalonian Government (Generalitat), which advised and supported the company on investments within and out of the country. Furthermore, Ramon Bacardit, who officially works at the Henkel headquarters in Dusseldorf, and who was appointed Investment Ambassador in Catalonia in 2007 has actively supported the realization of this investment project.
The three new adhesive laboratories, which will officially start operating in 2013, will be located in the Eureka building at the Research Park at the UAB (Bellaterra). The research center will incorporate 35 new investors, a technological center Leitat who will employ ten more people and another center, which has not yet been defined but which will also employ 10 additional people. The second level of the project will entail the increase of researchers to a 100.
Henkel has already two R&D centers in Catalonia, since 2010, which are situated in Tarragona, the ICIQ (Institut Català d’Investigació Química) and in Barcelona (Research Park in the UAB). Henkel Ibérica’s objective to broaden the research in Catalonia is because of the good results of these centers have yielded in the development of new reversible adhesives for the electronics industry, based on biomimetic polymers with memory effect, and also new oxygen curing resins. Both centers currently have 20 researchers. Henkel also has one production site in Catalonia, in Montornés del Vallés (Barcelona) where detergents and adhesives are produced (more than 300.000 tons) and exported to seven countries in the European Union.