The Cabildo de Tenerife has presented the construction project for the new Insular Slaughterhouse, in La Laguna, to the European fund program Next Generation for an amount of 15 million euros, the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Javier Parrilla, has advanced.
This action, planned since 2017 but which was blocked –with a lack of some payments included– has been resumed and now, due to lack of financing, it is also awaiting urban reports from the City Council and the General Directorate of Industry of the Canary Islands Government.
The counselor sees “incomprehensible” that the new slaughterhouse was not built when “there was money” and was clogged by “absurd administrative vicissitudes” and warns that if they do not obtain European resources, they will be sought in another way. “If the money doesn’t come, we’ll have to look for it, it’s not a one-year job,” he adds.
The new facility will be built on a plot adjacent to the current one and Parrilla justifies the high cost of the project in that it is “complex” because it is necessary to build a waste treatment facility, set the insulation levels and create the packaging and reception systems for animals.
“It is not enough just to build the building and put the machinery, it is an industrial project of the highest depth”, he highlights.
Parrilla comments that despite the 10% increase in meat consumption in the last two years, the company is still in deficit and the Cabildo contributes more than 1.5 million a year to achieve “balance” plus a subsidy of another 800,000 euros.
“The slaughterhouse is a strategic public service and we need a public entity that maintains quality and health guarantees,” he says.
The Cabildo has reserved more than 800,000 euros in the budgets to undertake a capital increase and that most of the company becomes public – so far the insular corporation has just over 33% of the shares -.
