Reyes Maroto visits the Korean company ILJIN Materials, which is to receive €18.2 million from the PERTE VEC

The minister welcomed the company's decision to take part in the Future project: Fast Forward (F3), led by the Volkswagen Group and Seat, for which the Korean company has obtained €18.2 million in public investment.

This investment is part of the project announced last May to open a battery components factory in Mont-roig del Camp (Tarragona), which will involve an investment of €600 million and the creation of 500 jobs. This factory will be the group's first in Europe.

For Minister Maroto, "this project demonstrates Spain's attractiveness as an investment destination and having companies like Iljin Materials strengthens our business ecosystem to move towards a new sustainable and connected mobility. The PERTEs that we are promoting in areas such as connected electric vehicles, renewable energies, green hydrogen and strategic sectors such as semiconductors and electronics are attracting the interest of foreign companies and we hope that this new visit to Korea will strengthen our trade and investment relations.

Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, during the meeting with the CEO of ILJIN Materials, Jeomsik Yang

The minister held a meeting with her counterpart, the Minister for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Bo Gyoon Park, where they reviewed the achievements in the development of the MOU on cooperation in the field of tourism, including the mutual visit programme 2020-2022. During the meeting, the minister stressed that Korea is the third most important Asian market for Spain and pointed out possible areas of cooperation: heritage and tourism, rural tourism, cultural tourism and film tourism. At the Seoul International Tourism Fair held in June 2022, Spain was the only European country with a pavilion and Turespaña won the creativity award.

The minister will take part tomorrow with the president in a Spain-South Korea business meeting where a Memorandum of Understanding will be signed between the Spanish Export Credit Insurance Company (CESCE) and its counterpart Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-SURE). By virtue of this agreement, both organisations declare their intention to increase financial cooperation to promote trade and investment between Korea and Spain and also to facilitate the participation of companies from both countries in export operations to third countries, the exchange of financial and commercial information between both institutions and the revision of the Reinsurance Agreement to update the coverage of both ECAs.

Non official translation