28 January 2008: Mercamadrid grows along with Madrid’s Expansion Plan

Mercamadrid is enlarging its premises by 453,000 square meterss (25 % above the current surface). This physical growth has created a new economic development area that has entailed an investment effort of more than 300 million euros and will allow creating 1,400 new jobs.

This enlargement will house the new mercamadrid tecnológico (technological mercamadrid), which will make the Industrial Food Park in the largest and more modern space in Europe allocated to food management and logistics.

The current food distribution paradigm will change with this new Mercamadrid, where technology, quality and innovation are the main tenets of this management approach, both in the design of the infrastructures and facilities as in the development of new activities and services.

The new mercamadrid tecnológico will be an area which planning is aimed to create a singular technological space with basic areas and spaces where the infrastructures will be designed according to the strictest security parameters and which physical structure will be designed following architectural excellence concepts and high performance technological solutions.

The Park’s policy will encourage the presence of business which activity is related to some aspect of food, nutrition, health and diet food and food technology, always with the ultimate vision of developing or implementing processes and technologies that are the fruit of state of the art food R+D. Also, logistic activities will be given priority together with the new forms of food product distribution.

The new Office for the Expansion of Mercamadrid Tecnológico has been created to manage and oversee the project. This office will be staffed by internal personnel while technical assistance will be outsourced to Empresa Nacional MERCASA, a national public entity, by means of agreements that will be developed, especially in terms of permanent inspection of the awarded contractors.

This new Mercamadrid Tecnológico will occupy a 453,492 square meters surface, of which 122,574 square meters will be allocated for freighted goods; 52,576 square meters for a logistic center that will include 20,029 square meters for freight logistics and 32,547 for roadways.

The Freight area will occupy 122,574 square meters with a buildability capacity 61,420 meters allocated to singular public services that will be materialized into four large lots occupying almost 16,000 square meters of commercial area each and a different area that will be allocated to a 57,219 square meters building that will house the Tertiary Services facilities.

The Expansion Plan allocates 194,436 square meters to create an urban park, because growing with Madrid also means enriching its ecological and environmental heritage. The park will also serve the additional purpose of recovering an old cattle way and creating a green corridor that will connect this large urban park to the Parque Lineal of the Manzanares River and the Forest Area of Entrevías.