China set his sights on Extremadura as a gateway to the European market, especially after the imposition of customs duties At electric car on the part of European Commission. Concretely, several Chinese businessmen are making repeated visits to the region with the support of Invest in Extremadura, an office that seeks to attract foreign investment to this region. autonomous community. The key sectors that Asians are focusing on are the assembly of electric vehicles, the development of green hydrogen and agriculture, as OKDIARIO learned.
Contacts began following a regional meeting on electric carin which several Chinese representatives participated. From that moment on, continuous contact was established between Extremadura and the Asian giant.
“We developed a strategy. We organized for the first time a forum in May at which the main electric vehicle manufacturers from China. We have made contacts with companies, with the main manufacturers. “They came here, they exhibited, they met,” explains Invest in Extremadura.
“We take them to the Mérida space. And from there, as an evolution of this first forum, we tried close deals with them in China. It had an effect. We had a mission here Chinese companies. Two weeks ago we had another one. In short, we are continually moving away from this forum,” he said.
China in Extremadura
Furthermore, the Government of Extremadura renounces public land so that foreign companies that set up in the region can use it to, among other things, source energy. Thus, the community studies “where are the energy sources” such as “gas pipelines” that companies could benefit from for their factories.
That is, the regional government analyzes public lands to determine which ones are usable for energy, taking into account issues such as the environmental impact for these businesses. Thus, companies can develop energy sources on these lands like fields of solar panels be autonomous.
“Above all, we have a collection of public properties. Concretely, we have 400 municipalities and around 150,000 properties. We carried out an analysis by first applying environmental filters and, ultimately, this allowed us to identify around sixty sites to locate electro-intensive projects in terms of energy consumption. renewable energies“, explains Invest in Extremadura.
In this way, the region can “establish, for example, in a hydrogen factory, large areas to produce photovoltaic energy”. “We have 60 locations of all these properties already identified that have no environmental restrictions and which have an average surface area of 350 hectares”, declares the entity.
“The investor comes in, sits down with the team and says, ‘I need a location for a biogas plant in Extremadura’”, and the community achieves this with continued attention.
“This is primarily intended for many activities. For example, the production of hydrogen, hydrogen-derived fuels, biomethane…These are activities that must be carried out on rural land,” explain those in charge.
The region boasts of being the sunniest in Spain. In fact, Invest in Extremadura considers this to be one of the comparative advantages of the community, in addition to other characteristics such as being one of the regions with the labor costs lower and have a very significant presence of water, which manufacturers of electric vehicles take particular account of.
It is therefore these characteristics that have attracted China’s attention to Extremadura, a region that has practically no competitors in all of Europe and which can fully serve as a gateway for Asians to the continent. trade war.
However, Invest in Extremadura recognizes that there has been some competition with areas such as Hungary and, in general, Eastern Europe. The economic conditions of the Magyar country (low taxes, low labor costs, etc.) mean that it is also placed at the center of concerns. large international companiesattracting many investments that could reach Extremadura.
