Intaf Group’s steel center starts preliminary operational tests
Large metallurgical parts will be processed in the facilities within a month
The expansion of the Intaf Group’s facilities, in the Narón industrial estate of As Lagoas, is practically completed, which will allow the facilities to be able to produce. According to the owner of the company, José Ramón Franco, “right now we are in a small impasse of 10 or 12 days, but 85% of the new facilities are already assembled”.
These new facilities, which house a steel treatment center that is unique in the country, will be focused on expanding the production capacity of the companies Sincro Mecánica, Evolventia and the Centro galego de tratamentos térmicos do aceiro. The part of the facilities that corresponds to the latter will be focused on the management of large parts.
One of the main objectives of the investment, which results in an increase in the surface area of the facilities of some 3,000 square meters, is that the group can open up “to new markets and undertake work for which we were limited until now”. These new facilities, which also include two new furnaces, one of them large and manufactured in France, are intended to provide a solution to the almost 200 companies that currently have to move outside Galicia to handle large steel parts.
It is expected that by the end of August or the beginning of September the new facilities will be up and running “to start producing real things, since we are now in a testing period”, explains the owner about a testing period that could last 3 or 4 months, or maybe even less time. For the time being and during these first months of activity, production will focus on “own consumption, to have some training time without taking risks with external orders from customers”.
The plan is approximately five months behind the initial proposal, since, according to José Ramón Franco, “the pandemic got in the way and made some things difficult, and recently certain contracts had to be renegotiated to adjust to the price increase”. In any case, this small delay “is within the acceptable and foreseeable range”, and in recent months a small part of the deadline has been made up.
As well as the execution time, the economic investment also underwent an extension. José Ramón Franco explains that the final price of the extension “is close to 3 million euros, within what was expected”. The initial budget was around 2.6 million, which was increased “due to the general rise in prices, but also because as time went on we incorporated some improvements that we thought were interesting and that increased the budget”.
In any case, both the time delay and the budget increase “were kept under control and are perfectly manageable”, so the company is satisfied with the process and the result. In addition to the private investment of Intaf and its partners, this expansion has been supported by the Galician Institute for Economic Promotion (Igape) to promote a center that fills an empty space in the Galician industry.
The creation of new jobs is one of the elements to be taken into account regarding the prospects of this expansion. Although the initial project contemplated the creation of about five new jobs, which, according to the owner, everything indicates that finally there will be some more, the greatest promotion of employment will be in the promoting companies, taking into account the repercussion that this ambitious project will have in the industry of its surroundings. The new jobs that Intaf will be able to carry out will bring Galician industry closer to processes that until now they had to look for outside Galicia. This new situation would allow the companies concerned to reduce costs considerably, resulting in an impact on jobs in the sector.
With almost all of the new facilities ready to start up, it is expected that, after the testing and staff training period, they can be commissioned at the beginning of next year.
- Direct employment: 5 new jobs
- Most of the new jobs will be in the development companies.
- Testing period: 3 to 4 months
- By early 2023, they expect to accept external orders.
- Final price of the expansion: 3,000,000 €.
- The initial budget was 2.6 million euros.
Source: La Voz de Galicia