Montmeló (Barcelona), June 2 (.).- The Catalan company Bold has announced this Friday at its factory in Montmeló (Barcelona) that it will invest 25 million euros in a growth plan to increase the production of electric batteries for aircraft and will also open a new factory in the United States.

The Generalitat’s Minister of Business and Labor, Roger Torrent, together with Bold’s CEO, Bernat Carreras, and the acting mayor of Montmeló, Pere Rodríguez, held a meeting at the factory located in the city, and then attended the media.

Roger Torrent has underlined that Bold is a “key” company, referring to the “model” the Government wants “for the country, to re-industrialize Catalonia”.

Torrent recalls the visit he made to the company in 2022 and has verified how “the project, apart from being consolidated, will develop with this investment of 25 million euros and with the creation of high-quality jobs.”

Counselors have stressed the “strategic importance outside of the battery area, for what decarbonization means in a sector like aeronautics”, which is why they wanted to “assist it, both in this fundamental axis of Valles Oriental, as in its expansion in the United States”.

The acting mayor of Montmeló, Pere Rodríguez, has shown “the importance of Bold for our city and the whole area that needs the Montmeló Circuit”.

Bold’s CEO, Bernat Carreras, expressed satisfaction after “quadrupling turnover value in the last 12 months” by “employing 100 people, something they are “proud of”.

Carreras has spoken of the “sustainability and energy transition” his company contributes to.

“In the future – he continued – we need to employ 100 people for our investment of 25 million euros in a new factory in the United States.” In this regard, he is grateful for the “support from the Generalitat”.

Bold, which has the support and assistance of 100,000 euros from ACCIÓ of the Ministry of Business and Labor within the framework of the High Impact line, has started producing the first batteries for electric aircraft produced in Catalonia

The company will recruit 50 new engineers, open a new plant in the United States, and intensify R&D activities by setting up a new laboratory at the Montmeló production plant to make it one of the benchmarks in Europe.

With the first order, the Bold battery will be installed in the first aircraft in 2024, a technology that will enable significant improvements in regional air transport with up to 70% CO2 savings.

Bold launched this 3,000 square meter facility last year to design and manufacture its own technology in the field of high-performance electric batteries.

The factory focuses on the development and integration of all the components that make up a battery such as casing, cooler, software and electronics.

They are currently in the prototype stage and first deliveries will be made in the second half of this year to aircraft or propulsion system manufacturers in the United States to carry out technology testing and obtain the necessary certificates so they can be installed in the first aircraft during 2024.

The battery is made of carbon fiber – the same material used in Formula 1 – and will be used by light aircraft between 2 and 9 passengers on regional flights.

The aircraft that will use the Bold battery comes from the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) segment, which is an aircraft that can take off and land vertically like a helicopter.

It is a technology that enables the adoption of new models of air mobility that help reduce the congestion of traditional transportation such as rail or road.

The company will start with hybrid aircraft, facilitating certification by regulators in the United States and the European Union (Federal Aviation Administration and European Union Aviation Safety Agency, respectively).

The company recently opened a subsidiary in the United Kingdom and they are growing at a higher rate than expected with the start of a production plant, a fact which has led to the need to reform various rooms in its facilities.

The Bold project started with the formation of the company in 2019 by Bernat Carreras, a former engineer for Formula 1 teams such as McLaren, Alpine and Honda (TYO :), specializing in composite material design and electric batteries.

The company started with engineering services, but since 2021 has invested strategically in developing its own products for advanced sustainable mobility and has chosen to become the world benchmark in the electric aviation sector.

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