On October 5, the minister for Industry, Tourism and Commerce, Jose Montilla, presided over the Best of European Business Awards ceremony that was held in Madrid. Abengoa Bioenergía was selected, among the medium-sized Spanish companies, as one of the three companies that put the most effort into and achieved most success with their innovation strategy. The company was awarded the Best of European Business diploma which was presented to our Communications Officer by the CECA chairman, Ramon Quintas.

This was the first edition of the Best of European Business Awards organized by the German consultation firm Roland Berguer in collaboration with the Financial Times. The competition is run simultaneously in seven countries and a total of some 6,000 companies are evaluated.

The Spanish jury was formed by Pedro Ballvé (Chairman of Campofrio), Jordi Canals (General Manager of the IESE), Jaime Castellanos (Chairman of Recoletos), Angel Corcóstegui (a former director of the Santander Group), Guillermo de la Dehesa (a director of the Santander Group), Javier Gomez Navarro (Chairman of the Superior Council of the Chambers of Commerce and Chairman of Aldeasa), and Ramon Quintas (Chairman of the CECA).

The objective of Abengoa Bioenergía is to develop and prove new technological solutions in the biomass sector in order to make bioethanol production competitive with the costs of gasoline production from fossil fuels. It is currently executing a large number of technological innovation and development projects in the enzymatic hydrolysis, gasification and catalysis, energy crops and e-diesel blends sectors. The investments in these projects will exceed 100 million euro over the next five years.