• The employers' association and the City Council add collaboration synergies to improve the competitiveness of the ceramic industry
• Ballester: «It is vital to add strategic alliances so that Castellón overcomes the crisis from leadership and innovation»
El Town Hall of Onda and Spanish Association of Ceramic Tile and Floor Manufacturers (ASCER) continue to work together to add competitiveness to the sector. As a result of this public-private collaboration, the municipal government has committed to studying new discounts in the IAE for energy efficiency to local companies, as well as those it is already applying to those companies that use cogeneration systems.
Likewise, both institutions also add synergies for the specialized training of professionals in a joint plan to obtain project financing through the European Union Recovery Fund. The municipal government, through the Employment Agency (Monteblanco), has already made available to the companies associated with ASCER all the training offer that may be useful to ceramic professionals, such as courses for presses and kilns in the ceramic sector, lift truck operators, English, French, digital skills, courses of digital competence and workshops on product marketing or business management software.
Along the same lines, the City Council of Onda maintains its agreement with Proalse, the Professional Association of Tilers Tilers, by which the council undertakes that all the ceramics that are installed in municipal works are in charge of professionals with the Tiler Welder card issued by this organization. Likewise, the `Manolo Safont´ Tile Museum has been the official headquarters of this national association since 2020, where it carries out training programs.
“In these moments in which a serious health, social and economic crisis is threatening us, it is vital to join strategic alliances so that the province of Castellón faces and overcomes the crisis from the leadership and innovation provided by institutions such as ASCER. This is not the time to stand still, but to invest and work to grow and consolidate jobs", pointed out the mayor of OndaCarmina Ballester.
Claim in infrastructures
For its part, ASCER has conveyed the need to streamline procedures in public administrations, which represent a brake on development; the importance of continuing to adapt the industrial estates to the highest quality levels to add competitiveness and attract investment; or the reduction of tax burdens on taxes such as IAE and ICIO. Measures that, all of them, the City Council is already undertaking. In addition, both institutions have agreed to continue claiming before the Generalitat Valenciana the improvement of the infrastructure and connections of the province such as the doubling, with two more lanes, of the CV-21 highway that connects Onda with L'Alcora to streamline traffic between the two industrial cities; or the fast vial between Onda and Vila-real.
Investment Plan of 2021
It should be remembered that the consistory has already approved the Investment Plan of 2021 to improve the competitiveness and infrastructures of the 12 industrial estates of the city. The total budget amounts to 1,9 millones de euros, for which it has requested, also by consensus, the co-financing of the Generalitat Valenciana through the aid line of the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness, IVACE.
