EU to Finance Cosentino Group Improvements
LUXEMBOURG – Cosentino Group received a €120 million loan in December from the lending arm of the European Union to enhance and improve the surfacing company’s green production work.
The loan – Cosentino’s second from the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank (EIB) – will fund efficiency improvements and renewable energy, along with improving its recycling efforts, at its production headquarters in Cantoria, Spain.
Part of the funding will address production efficiency through automation, robotization and digitization, according to an EIB release.
Cosentino will also improve the recycling of waste from production materials and the installation of new renewable energy generation capacity for self-consumption. The company will also work on the future use of cleaner alternative fuels with its new Dekton® production line.
The loan will fund project construction and implementation through 2025, with the temporary hiring of around 200 people a year, according to EIB calculations. Completed projects will generate 135 new jobs in company production areas.
“As the EU Climate Bank, we are pleased to support the Cosentino Group in its investment in new technologies that will improve the sustainability of its products and processes,” said Ricardo Mourinho Félix, EIB vice president. “This project will mean greater decarbonization and circularity of the activities of the Spanish multinational, fully adjusting to the policies established in our Climate Bank Roadmap.”
“This new support provided by the EIB reinforces and accelerates our Sustainability plan, aimed at consolidating the decarbonization process, the commitment to clean and renewable energies and, in In general, the comprehensive transition towards a more-sustainable model,” said Cosentino Group Chairman Francisco Martínez-Cosentino Justo.
“Together with our own investments already planned for the coming years, we want Cosentino to be a benchmark company in the industrial field worldwide in circularity, energy self-sufficiency and environmental efficiency, aspects that will be key to competitiveness in the future,” he added.
Cosentino Group has been working with the EIB since 2016. Prior to the recently signed financing line, the EU Bank financed the R&D strategy of the Spanish multinational with a loan of €70 million euros in 2016 for implementation of innovative manufacturing and logistics systems.