The Council of Ministers, at its meeting of 18 February 2022, authorised the granting to Técnicas Reunidas of temporary financial aid from the Solvency Support Fund for Strategic Companies (FASEE), whose Management Board had previously approved, after an exhaustive and rigorous process of analysis of the company’s economic and legal situation, at its meeting of 1 February of the same year.

The support, for a total amount of 340 million euros, was channelled through an ordinary loan of 165 million euros and a participating loan of 175 million euros.

The objective of the support provided by the FASEE is to compensate, through temporary public support operations, the impact of the health emergency generated by the COVID-19 pandemic on the balance sheet of Spanish companies that are solvent and considered strategic for the country’s national or regional productive and economic network. 

Strategic importance of Técnicas Reunidas

Técnicas Reunidas is one of the most important companies in its sector on an international scale.

Its activity is mainly focused on the development of engineering projects, design and construction of industrial plants to produce clean fuels, natural gas and chemical products. Throughout its more than 60 years of history, it has developed more than 1,000 industrial plants in more than 50 countries and is currently executing projects in some 25.

Its strategic nature is based not only on its high economic relevance and sector leadership, but also on the positive impact of its activities on Spain’s export capacity and the support of the country’s business network.

The company, which carries out more than 90% of its activities outside Spain through large-scale projects, seeks to intensively and systematically incorporate a large number of Spanish companies of very different sizes in its development. As a result, its activities have a considerable favorable effect on the maintenance of the Spanish business network and on the export capacity of its companies.

Its 7,000 employees, most of whom are highly qualified engineers, make its headquarters in Spain a nucleus of engineering excellence, supported by its own Research Centre, which allows it to develop and apply its own technologies in the development of its projects and also indirectly benefits the Spanish companies that collaborate with it through the transfer of best practices and know-how.

In addition to all of the above, Técnicas Reunidas has contributed to the objectives of decarbonization and energy transition. On the one hand, the company incorporates the most advanced environmental preservation and energy efficiency measures into its traditional projects from the design phase; and on the other hand, for the last three years it has initiated an intense line of work comprising solutions directly linked to energy transition, the circular economy and decarbonization through projects related to renewable hydrogen, biofuels, waste recovery, CO2 capture and storage, etc.

Finally, it is also important to highlight the efforts that Técnicas Reunidas has been making for several years in an area considered strategic in the future plans of our country: digitalization. The company applies big data, the possibilities of the cloud, the internet of things, cybersecurity, automatic learning, artificial intelligence and other advanced digital technologies in its projects to create smarter industrial plants; it implements digital twins to manage industrial assets throughout their life cycle, and digitalizes its business processes to make its projects more productive and efficient.

Transparency

The long duration and profound intensity of the pandemic, which had an extremely serious and widespread impact on the world economy as a whole, logically had very unfavorable consequences for Técnicas Reunidas’ activities. 

The withdrawal of investments, interruptions in the supply chain and preventive measures against the spread of the disease, among other factors, had a strong impact on the execution of ongoing projects. In turn, the resulting successive reprogramming slowed down the delivery of programmed income.

The temporary financial support from the FASEE and the subsequent progressive overcoming of the short and medium term problems caused by the pandemic have enabled the necessary conditions to be put in place to return to a clear path of growth and profitability, as demonstrated by the results obtained since the third quarter of 2022.

The granting of the aid to Técnicas Reunidas is therefore in line with the conditions and objectives established with the creation of the FASEE; and, consequently, the resources thus received by the company have been used to ensure the maintenance of its activities in the best possible conditions, meet its liquidity needs, act in favor of preserving employment and strengthen its strategic actions in technological innovation, energy transition and digitization.

Specifically, the destination of the financial support received has been distributed as follows: 

Item
Operating costs	81%
Non-operating paymentes (general, structural, commercial, etc..)	19%