The Germans only want the foundry of Avilés, while the Swiss opt for the whole factory and also aspire to the one in La Coruña
The multinational Alcoa has ruled out four of the six companies that had submitted bids for their Avilés and La Coruña factories. From the North American giant, they confirmed yesterday that «it would work with some of the offers». As the NEW SPAIN has learned, there are two: those presented by the Swiss fund Parter Capital and the German Quantum Capital. The former intends to develop its industrial project in both Asturias and Galicia, while the latter limits its activities to Avilés and, more specifically, to its foundry business.
The San Balandrán works council said yesterday that «the company» had informed them that «there were two potential investors who had submitted a binding offer for the plants assuming the entire workforce.» This point is fundamental for the North American company. It is included in the agreement on the employment regulation file presented last January, the document that is governing labor relations in the aluminera throughout this year.
Quantum Capital is not an unknown company in Asturias: it owns the Tenneco shock absorber plant in Gijón. In addition, it is the foreign investor who put the Vestas plant in Villadangos del Páramo, in León, into its line of fire. The company is based in Bavaria, Germany. His preference for aluminum casting got a sidelong glance from the workers. The lion’s share of Alcoa Avilés, as the workers have said throughout the months that the aluminum crisis has been lengthening, are the electrolysis lines. Those do not count for Quantum. The company ruled out taking over the sister factory of the multinational in La Coruña, although now it could change its position. According to the avilesino company committee, is willing to visit the Galician facilities.
The Swiss venture capital fund Parter Capital expressed its desire to take control of the two factories and, in addition, to do it at full capacity, that is, starting the electrolysis series and melting scrap metal. Parter Capital points out in its own website that the focus of its «activities is the acquisition of companies or parts of companies in traditional sectors with a sales volume of 20 to 300 million euros». This approach has taken shape in sectors as heterogeneous as electric, electronic and construction.
All this was unveiled yesterday afternoon in Madrid, in the process of a meeting of the ERE’s follow-up meeting, «an internal meeting,» according to a spokeswoman for the North American multinational that launched its Desire to get rid of their primary aluminum factories in Avilés and La Coruña -not like that of San Ciprián- and blaming the decision to take a stand in the face of the fall of a business of which Alcoa had previously been European leader.
Prior to the internal meeting, the European Alcoa Committee (Euroforum) was held. In this place, the multinational informed of all this process of sale of the plants of La Coruña and Avilés. The two together employ more than seven hundred workers. The union representatives are called to a new meeting this morning. The details of the sale will go to separate assemblies of workers.
The situation Alcoa is in since October is critical. On the 27th the Government of Spain published the conditions of the energy auction – which is a crucial element for large companies to continue producing. Of them, it was inferred that the factory of Avilés was not going to be able to participate in it, that is to say, that the Government that had promised to save the sector put one more stone in a road full of them.
To all this is added the inability to legislate a special statute for electrointensive companies. It must have been before the last elections and the dream of the righteous continues to sleep. The excuse for the break is due to a recommendation of the Competition Commission.
And in this line move the workers who managed to take to the streets in the middle of Avilés when the Alcoa company expressed its desire to get rid of the plants that it had acquired when the State got rid of its holding of companies in the nineties.
