PowerCo trains its first 42 students in Sagunto despite Battery Campus delay
PowerCo has started training 42 students in battery technology while it waits for the Battery Campus in Sagunto to open, now delayed until the 2027/2028 school year.
Before the Battery Campus in Sagunto even opens its doors, PowerCo (the battery subsidiary of Volkswagen Group) has already started training future workers for its battery gigafactory. A total of 42 students have started, or are about to start, training programmes linked to battery technology and manufacturing this year, with a job at the future plant as the main career path.
Most of the group, 30 students, began this September on the advanced vocational training course in Laboratory Analysis and Quality Control, the first of the courses planned for the future Battery Campus. For now, classes are being held temporarily at the CIPFP Vicente Blasco Ibáñez school in Valencia city, while construction continues on the centre that PowerCo is building together with the Generalitat Valenciana (the regional government) in Sagunto.
The delay goes back to a series of appeals against the award of the construction contract, which held up the selection of the building company for months. According to valenciaplaza.com, reporting in October 2025, Spain's Central Administrative Court for Contractual Appeals (TACRC) lifted the suspension on the works after rejecting an appeal from construction firm ACS, finding no irregularities in the tender documents. The Generalitat eventually awarded the construction contract to a joint venture, UTE Vías y Construcciones-CHM Obras e Infraestructuras, for 30.8 million euros, with an initial 12-month building schedule and a planned opening in 2026, according to the official award resolution. That original timeline has since slipped repeatedly, and the campus will not officially open until the 2027/2028 school year.
Joining the 30 vocational students will be another 12 students on the joint Master's Degree in Battery Technology and Manufacturing, whose first edition starts on 5 October. The programme is run jointly by the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the Universitat de València (UV), with credits split between the two universities and some practical sessions in Sagunto alongside PowerCo staff. UPV's own rector's office points to the joint degree as an unusual example of shared work between two public universities and a company from the sector.
Training is one of the least visible, but most strategic, parts of the gigafactory project. The training centre was a condition for the multinational's arrival in the Valencia region from the very start: the agreement signed between the regional government and the company specifically included setting up this training space. The scale of public investment behind the project helps explain why: the regional government (Consell) approved a direct grant of up to 90 million euros for setting up the plant at Parc Sagunt II, to be spent between 2023 and 2027, for a factory designed to produce 40 gigawatt hours of battery cells a year, enough for more than 500,000 electric vehicles.
The future Battery Campus will be built on plot TR-5 of Parc Sagunt II, close to the battery cell factory itself, in a two-block building with a ground floor, first floor and partial second floor, covering 19,951 square metres. It will have room for around 400 students in specialities such as mechatronics, chemistry, industrial automation and environmental safety, and will combine a publicly owned area, fully funded by the Generalitat, with another area leased to PowerCo for 30 years, with an option to buy: the future PowerCo Battery Academy, aimed at training and upskilling the workers who will operate the plant's machinery.
The delay has not gone without local criticism, though. According to elperiodicodeaqui.com, reporting in June 2026, local party Iniciativa Porteña demanded answers over the hold-up and also called for a full refurbishment of the CIPFP Eduardo Merello vocational school (in Puerto de Sagunto, the coastal district), which has needed modernising for years. Beyond recent corporate news, with Chinese firm Gotion taking a 49% stake in the gigafactory, PowerCo's training roadmap is moving ahead regardless of the campus construction timeline.
For the first students, training has already begun, even though the finished classrooms are still two school years away. The company says its goal is to have a pool of specifically trained professionals ready by the time the gigafactory becomes fully operational. According to Valencia Plaza, with additional data from the Generalitat Valenciana and the Universitat Politècnica de València.