The British chemical company Croda invests 10.5 MEUR to open an automated warehouse in Girona
03 Dec 2021
- This 6,100 m² robotic warehouse will reduce product delivery time by 50% and make the Girona headquarters the multinational’s largest EU distribution hub.
- Throughout the entire project, Croda was supported by ACCIÓ- Catalonia Trade & Investment, the agency for the business competitiveness belonging to the Ministry of Business and Employment.
- This logistics investment is part of the Fogars de la Selva (Girona) plant’s growth plan, in which the British company expects to invest a further 26 million euros over the next three years.
The British chemical company Croda opened a new automated warehouse in Fogars de la Selva (Girona, Catalonia) on Thursday, a project representing an investment of 10.5 million euros. With these new facilities, the company's headquarters in Girona becomes the largest distribution hub for the multinational's products in the European Union.
For this project, the company received the support of ACCIÓ, the agency for the business competitiveness belonging to the Ministry of Business and Employment. According to ACCIÓ, Catalonia is currently home to 780 subsidiaries of British companies.
The new warehouse, which complements the company’s production plant in Fogars de la Selva, is fully robotic and covers an area of 6,100 m². With a storage capacity of 6 million tons, it will allow the company to reduce product delivery time by 50% and also manage them more efficiently. In fact, with this project, the new logistics warehouse will be able to centralize the entire storage and distribution of the production of the group’s 70 plants located throughout Europe, the United States and Asia.
With this new warehouse, the company is growing and consolidating Croda’s facilities in Fogars de la Selva, which currently has a workforce of some 200 people. In fact, as part of the plant's growth plan, the British company expects to invest an additional €26 million over the next three years to grow on the basis of new innovation and sustainability projects.
During the opening ceremony, the General Director of Industry and CEO of ACCIÓ- Catalonia Trade & Investment, Natàlia Mas, declared: “Croda exemplifies the type of international company we work to attract in Catalonia: a competitive company committed to innovation and sustainability, with a growing productive activity and high added value”. Mas stressed that "thanks to the investments of companies such as Croda, the chemical sector in Catalonia has established itself as the third most important in our industry" and that it demonstrates "the growing confidence of foreign companies in Catalonia".
Croda’s Spanish Managing Director, Sergi Ruscalleda, stressed that this is an investment "that makes us much more efficient in terms of customer service, as facilities like these allow us to increase the reliability, speed and ensure the traceability of products". Ruscalleda explained that "the Croda plant in Catalonia is one of the most important in the group in Europe and exports almost 85% of its production, in addition to managing products from other plants in the group".
Based in Snaith (United Kingdom), Croda operates in the specialty chemicals sector; manufacturing, in other words, thickeners, emulsifiers or excipients that form part of third party products, especially in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics or chemicals sectors. Internationally, the company has a staff of 4,500 people and a turnover of more than 1.6 billion euros.
