In early 2011 the Basque region will host Spain's largest (Europe's fifth biggest) private technology centre. The new centre, not officially baptized as yet, will arise out of the merger of Cidemco, ESI, Fatronik, Inasmet, Labein and Robotiker, all of them members of the Tecnalia Corporation. The protocol for the complete merger of the technology and research centres involved was signed yesterday.

With a workforce some 1,300 strong, the new centre is expected to bill more than €110 million. Like the individual centres before it, the new mega-centre will be targeting industry, and looking to satisfy the technology and innovation requirements of firms working in the healthcare sector, transport, the casting and steel industry, energy, communications and the environment. Inasmet chairman José María Echarri, who doubles as chairman of the six-sided technology centre merger committee, explained yesterday in Bilbao that two of Tecnalia Corporation's eight centres, AZTI and Neiker, were not involved in the merger "for the moment" because of "the way they were set up and the public sector stakeholding in their share capital." Echarri added that the fact that AZTI worked in agriculture and fisheries had also weighed heavily in the final decision to exclude it from the merger. "Of course," he said, "the centres involved in the merger all work in industry." Nevertheless, executives had not completely discarded the idea of integrating the two laboratories some time in the future. "The door's been left ajar."

Echarri explained that the merger, which should be completed in 18 months' time, was the culmination of "a highly successful model launched in July 2001 with the creation of Tecnalia Technology Corporation." Like Neiker and AZTI, the new mega-centre would continue to be a part of the Corporation. The final merger agreement is scheduled to be signed in late 2010, so "we'll be able to implement it in 1Q 2011 at the latest", when "the legal bodies that integrate the technology centres will disappear," Echarri added. That would be the signal for them all to be united in a single legal body.