acció

Students participate in strikes and midday protest ahead of larger evening march

Catalan capital is biggest European cruise destination and fourth globally

New study finds that 75% of Catalan AI companies are small businesses together employing over 8,000 people

Tourism, trade and citizens – the potential impacts on the territory and how the government is responding

World's largest mobile industry fair draws to a close in Barcelona with 2,000 more attendees than last year

Thirty years on, the Catalan government has opened 40 offices abroad and managed 20k internationalization projects

Report finds that most companies that invested in R&D in 2017 intend to spend even more this year

Catalan News talks trade with Carles Gómara, innovation manager for Catalonia Trade & Investment, on the grounds of the Mobile World Congress 2018

The innovation of the BDF Ingredients company consists of adding an enzyme which reduces the amount of chemical additives to the products

Catalonia Trade and Investment’s Innovation Barometer presented on Wednesday shows innovation in Catalonia is growing

Hong Kong-based multinational Thunder Power, which specializes in electric vehicles, is planning to open an R&D center in Catalonia. The center will become operational in 2018, involve an initial investment of €80 million, and create 200 jobs, a company statement revealed last Thursday. The group is also considering building a plant in Catalonia for assembly and distribution. This project will be ready by 2020, will create 1,000 jobs, and could produce up to 50,000 vehicles per year. The agreement was signed during the unveiling event of the first running prototype at the prestigious Eaton House in Hong Kong. Over 250 business professionals from Barcelona, Catalonia, and Hong Kong participated in the showcase, including the Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, and the Second Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni.

The Catalan Ministry for Business and Knowledge will invest 1.2 MEUR this year to increase Catalonia’s trade and investment office network abroad. In particular, six new centres will be opened in 2017, which will be added to the 36 which are already functioning on each of the five continents. The new offices will be located in Havana, Los Angeles, Tehran, Zagreb, Amsterdam and Nairobi. Thus, Catalan business will be represented in 109 economic regions. “Now Catalonia’s presence in the business field worldwide will be comparable to and even bigger than that of other states”, explained Núria Betriu, Director of Industry of the Catalan Department for Business and Knowledge.

Catalonia and Japan have renewed their business, cultural, touristic and research ties for the next three years, through the so-called ‘Japan Plan 2016-2019’. The Government presented the agreement, approved last 25^th of October, on Monday and explained that it aims at boosting business promotion, investment attraction, tourism cooperation, student mobility and cultural and gastronomic exchange. While the presentation of the Plan was taking place on Monday morning in Barcelona, a mission organised by the Port of Barcelona and Acció, the Catalan Public competitiveness and internationalisation agency, was in Panama trying to improve the trade relationship with the Central America region. The Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, and the Catalan Minister for Planning and Sustainability, Josep Rull, accompanied fifty Catalan companies on their visit to Panama and Cuba, where they held 300 meetings with local businesses.  

Mind the Byte, a Catalan company dedicated to computational drug design, will enter the bioinformatics market in Japan, thanks to a distribution agreement with the Japanese company Filgen. This agreement came after several meetings between the companies during a mission of the public business competitiveness and internationalisation agency ACCIÓ in Japan last year. The founder and CEO of Mind the Byte, Alfons Nonell-Canals, stated that this step is important as the overall bioinformatics market in Japan “is expected to grow 21% by 2020”. The company estimates that it will have an annual turnover of €1.2 million in Japan by 2020, “a very large and mature market in the field of biotechnology”. "We are small and we are in a phase of development but Japan is a key country", said Nonell-Canals.

Catalonia is the region of Spain that attracts most foreign investment. According to the report fDi Markets by the Financial Times, Catalonia attracted €14.532 billion in foreign investment between January 2011 and June 2016, coming from 601 projects that resulted in the creation of 38,385 direct jobs. The Catalan economy leads the ranking in Spain overall in terms of attracting foreign direct investment and accounted for 31% of capital, 34% of job creation and 37% of projects during the period mentioned. The countries leading the investment in Catalonia are Germany, France and the United States. The ICT sector and software, logistics and support services for companies are the fields in which Catalonia shows the best investment opportunities in comparison with other economies worldwide.