How Spain’s Recovery Plan Is Backing Alier’s Circular Economy Model
Spain’s Recovery Plan and the Industrial Model It Is Backing
Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, financed through NextGenerationEU funds, is designed to channel public investment toward companies building genuinely circular, decarbonized industrial models. Alier is one of those companies, and the funding we have received across three separate programs reflects the full scope of what that transformation looks like in practice: what goes into the product, how the product is manufactured, and how the energy to manufacture it is generated.
Our Director of Sustainable Growth, Elisabet Alier, was present at the government’s recent event on Spain’s green and digital transition alongside President Pedro Sánchez, where the Recovery Plan’s role in accelerating industrial transformation was highlighted at the national level.
Giving New Life to Beverage Carton Waste
We received a grant of 9,887,500 euros under the PERTE for Circular Economy, out of a financeable budget of 28.25 million euros, within the category of improved waste management.
The project consists of a new production process to treat and recover beverage carton packaging waste, separating its components to obtain recycled paper and polyethylene-aluminum pellets, known as PolyAl. The objective is to significantly increase our processing capacity for a complex waste stream and convert it into high-value-added products, executed through pre-treatment, washing, and extrusion lines capable of handling tens of thousands of tonnes of input waste.
This is the industrial foundation behind PolyAl: a material recovered from what had previously been an underutilized fraction of beverage carton packaging, now formally recognized as a circular economy investment at the national level.
New Decarbonized Plants for Industrialized Construction
We have launched two new high-efficiency facilities, in Zaragoza and in Lleida, designed to manufacture gypsum board for industrialized construction. This model produces components in-plant and reduces timelines, costs, and waste compared to traditional construction methods. It is a natural extension of our core business: the technical paper Alier produces is precisely what covers gypsum board.
Both plants have received funding through Line 4 of the PERTE for Industrial Decarbonization, under Component 31 (RePowerEU) of the Recovery Plan, managed by SEPIDES. The Lleida facility received a grant of 11.1 million euros out of a financeable budget of 39 million euros, the full amount requested, and was rated the highest-scoring project in the entire call with 57.73 points. The Zaragoza plant received 9.63 million euros in the first call of that same line.
Line 4 does not fund marginal improvements. It specifically targets new plants or production lines built from the ground up to operate without fossil fuels. Being selected under both calls, and achieving the top evaluation in the most recent one, is meaningful external validation of the engineering behind both facilities.
Renewable Energy: Replacing Fossil Fuels at Industrial Scale
The central piece of our renewable energy investment is a 35.86 MW forestry biomass boiler, the largest for industrial use in Catalonia, which replaces a significant portion of the factory’s natural gas with wood chips from forest waste. The installation was financed through the renewable thermal energy program of the Recovery Plan, processed through the Institut Català de l’Energia: a total investment of 15,419,800 euros and a grant of 6,167,920 euros, awarded to ENGIE, the company that designed, built, and operates the plant for Alier. Combined with the biogas generated in our own treatment facility, this transition allows for the avoidance of approximately 91,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
What This Adds Up To
Three programs. Three dimensions of the same industrial transformation.
Alier gives new life to complex materials such as beverage carton packaging, laminated papers, and other difficult-to-recycle fibers, and continues identifying new opportunities to apply innovation and a long-term commitment to sustainability. The Recovery Plan has provided the financial infrastructure to do that at industrial scale.
Being recognized by Spain’s official Recovery Plan platform as a model for industrial decarbonization is not a communications achievement. It is confirmation that the direction we have taken, building new capacity around recycled materials, decarbonized processes, and renewable energy, is one that public institutions are actively choosing to back.