The plant, equipped with the latest technology, has been designed to distill 8,000 tons per year of resin

The year 2018 begins with good news in the resin sector. After the weekend snowfall of Reyes, a new resin factory – ‘Resinas Navas de Oro’ – has started to operate in Navas de Oro – the seventh in Spain.

Before its inauguration there were two small plants of the Criado brothers, in Zarzuela del Pinar and Lastras de Cuéllar, one in Coca, another in Cuéllar and another two outside the province of Segovia, specifically in Almazán and Cuenca. The entry into operation of ‘Resinas Navas de Oro’ corroborates what was already an open secret, that of the growth of the resin sector.

The promoters of the new factory are not newcomers to the business. 50% of the company belongs to Antonio Zamora, a native of Navas de Oro, who is proud, with good humor, to be «the one who has been working with the resin for the longest time in this region». The other half of the company is José Ángel Astorga, from Pedrajas de San Esteban (Valladolid), whose family has «all their lives» dedicated to pineapples and resin. The two have embarked on a company that has required the investment of more than three million euros, but that «promises». The resin is on the rise, the two know it, and have wanted to bet on it.

Located in the town of Navas de Oro -in particular, at the exit of the town, in the direction of Cuéllar- ‘Resinas Navas de Oro’ is an old project that has taken a long time to set. The promoter company presented its project in Navas de Oro City Council in October 2014, but several issues have delayed its entry into operation. The construction has taken just under a year. The first stone was placed at the end of January 2017; During the past year, the resiners of the region were already acquiring raw materials, and on January 8 of this year, after a trial period of the machinery, it was ready to start producing. The factory is prepared to produce 8,000 tons per year, although this first year will not reach that figure, according to Astorga. Rosin and turpentine will be produced, which will later be sold to companies, both Spanish and European. In that sense, the two entrepreneurs do not want to close any doors.

«We can say very loudly that we have a factory with the latest technology, fully automated,» says Astorga, who doubts that the other six resin plants in operation in Spain currently have such cutting-edge machinery.

In principle, ‘Resinas Navas de Oro’ starts with four workers. But their owners have already warned of their intention to increase the staff, to reach 15 workers.

Although ‘Resinas Navas de Oro’ has not been officially inaugurated, its owners hope that in the coming weeks the president of the Provincial Council, Francisco Vázquez, will find a space in his agenda to move to the plant and, in an institutional act, ‘bless’ the facilities of a factory that, in the medium term, expects to generate 200 indirect jobs in the region, with all that that entails.

the evolution of the sector In the absence of taking stock of the 2017 campaign, the opening of the Navas de Oro factory shows that the resin boom is not ephemeral. The sector grows, year by year, and forecasts indicate that it will continue to do so in the nearest future. It should be remembered that, after the most critical year, 2008, in which the surface area in Segovia was the lowest since statistics were available, the trend changed. At first, softly. Then, more abrupt.

In 2012, around 7,000 tons of resin were collected throughout Castilla y León, the highest in the previous quarter of the century. In 2013, the 9,000 tons were around. Figures that, although they seem high, are still very far from those of 1957, when Spain set its record (57,267 tons). At the moment, it is a utopia to reach such production again, but nobody escapes that, given the right conditions -among them, the support of public administrations-, the resin can return to become, not long after, in cornerstone of the economy of a land in need of business projects.

News collected at: http://www.eladelantado.com/provincia-de-segovia/navas-oro-inaugura-la-septima-fabrica-resinas-espana/