Ship and submarine manufacturing company Navantia will launch a recruitment campaign for more than 1,500 direct jobs over the next few years, which will also lead to the creation of 15,600 indirect jobs. In other words, in total it is a generation of 17,000 jobs for the coming years.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, announced the employment plan for Navantia, highlighting the strategic nature of the naval sector and has stressed that “the activity and workload in all the centres will be guaranteed”.
For her part, Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, who has visited the Navantia facilities in San Fernando, highlighted that, despite the difficult international context, Navantia has been able to take advantage of the windows of opportunity that were opening up in relation to the profound changes that come hand in hand with digitisation and the need to advance in a circular and green economy. In this way, the minister explained that the company has managed to position itself as “a leading company, a benchmark in many aspects in the naval market, with a very powerful and diversified line of business”.
In this sense, Navantia is finalising its 2023-2027 Strategic Plan, with the name Horizon 5.0, which will reinforce the path of digital and sustainable transformation initiated in the Plan undertaken in 2018.
Investments in Navantia San Fernando
The Minister of Finance and Public Function, in an act with the mayoress of San Fernando, Patricia Cavada, and the president of the public company, Ricardo Domínguez, has also presented the investments approved to place the Navantia shipyard in San Fernando at the forefront shipbuilding technology.
Specifically, Navantia has allocated 41.2 million euro to modernise the Flat Open Units Workshop, a facility that will boost the shipyard’s competitiveness by shortening production times through hybrid laser technology. With the works already started, the new workshop will be fully operational in spring 2024.
Secondly, the shipyard is finalising the procedures to start the works on the Naval Systems Centre of Excellence, valued at 21.1 million euro. This infrastructure, which will form part of the Navantia Centres of Excellence network, will boost R&D, attract talent and contribute to generating an ecosystem of innovation and competitiveness in the Security and Defence area.
“It will be a cutting-edge space of 6,000 m2 that will house more than 300 STEM degree professionals, providing the Bay of Cádiz with a reference centre with a national and international vocation”, stressed the president of Navantia.
The modernisation of San Fernando is added to the one planned in the Puerto Real shipyard, valued at 43 million euro, to modernise the flat block workshop, and to those undertaken in other company centres, such as the Digital Block Factory in Ferrol and the reform of the Fene shipyard in order to adapt it to the construction of elements for offshore wind energy.
Navantia activity load
During the meeting, the managers of the company have also explained the current and future work programs. In Navantia San Fernando, five corvettes are built for Saudi Arabia, which has resulted in economic activity and 6,000 jobs in the region (more than 1,000 of them in Navantia). In the words of Ricardo Domínguez, the demonstration of “excellence” in this program has made it possible to sign a new agreement with the client for the construction of another five multi-mission vessels.
They have also highlighted the FSS program, through which Navantia will participate in the construction of three logistics warehouses in the United Kingdom, generating 1,000 jobs in Navantia and the auxiliary industry between 2025 and 2030.
Thus, they have reviewed other naval programs, such as the patrol boat for Morocco and the BAM-IS for the Navy -in addition to the F110 frigates being built in Ferrol and the series of S80 submarines in Cartagena- and civilian and military ship repairs in Cádiz and Rota.
On the other hand, the potential of green energy has been highlighted, since the Navantia shipyard in Puerto Real is also developing foundation programs and substations for offshore wind energy.
Centres of excellence
For his part, the president of Navantia detailed the plans to modernise the San Fernando shipyard and explained that the Naval Systems Centre of Excellence will include everything related to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. “It will therefore be essential not only for the programs that are developed in Bahia but for others such as the F110, the latest generation frigate for the Navy, and the S80,” he pointed out.
This centre will provide Navantia with the necessary infrastructure to develop and test the systems of the different ships and will have innovation laboratories that will enhance the capabilities of the products shipped by incorporating technologies such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum and photonics, among others. All of this will allow products with high added value to be placed on the market.
The Naval Systems Centre of Excellence is part of a network of six (Navantia Centres of Excellence, CoEx) distributed throughout the company’s different production centres and dedicated to different technologies and businesses such as the Digital Twin (Ferrol), Additive Manufacturing (Puerto Real), Smart Services (Cartagena), Smart Ships (Madrid) and Green Energies (Cartagena, Puerto Real and Fene).
