The Regional Minister of Education of the Government of Navarra, Carlos Gimeno, visited this Monday the facilities of Tafalla Iron Foundry S. Coop, an industrial cooperative integrated in the Mondragon Corporation and specialized in the manufacture of safety components (blocks and cylinder heads, above all) for automotive, commercial and industrial vehicle applications. There he learned the details of the Intensive Dual Vocational Training (FP) program that the company plans to develop from this September, coinciding with the start of the 2024-2025 academic year.
The initiative, in which the Polytechnic Center (CIP) of Tafalla collaborates, will allow twenty of its students to obtain the title of Higher Technician in Industrial Mechatronics after completing a period of paid internships of between 700 and 1,000 hours (distributed between the classrooms and the cooperative itself). “Our program is a pioneer in the region and demonstrates the commitment of the cooperative movement and the Social Economy to social and territorial cohesion and to avoid the talent drain in the Central Zone,” said Miguel Ugalde, general manager of Trafalla Iron Foundry.
Ugalde, in particular, explained to Gimeno some of the opportunities, benefits and advantages of his original academic proposal. “First of all, we train students in a totally new discipline and prevent them from leaving the Merindad in search of new job opportunities and better living conditions,” he said.
In addition, he stressed that those in charge maintain a commitment with the students to join the company “as long as the technical conditions necessary for hiring are met and the candidates fulfill the profiles required by the company”.
The Industrial Mechatronics Advanced Technician degree also contemplates the training of CIP Tafalla’s teaching staff “in new technologies and management tools”. “At Tafalla Iron Foundry, we firmly believe in the possibilities offered by Dual Vocational Training and the cooperative and Social Economy model in which we instruct the new generations through the different activities contemplated in EdukaCoop. A program promoted by ANEL that, this academic year alone, reached more than a thousand Navarrese students of ESO, Bachiller and FP”, said Ignacio Ugalde, Human Resources Director at Trafalla Iron Foundry and president of the aforementioned Association of Social Economy Companies of Navarre (ANEL).
TRAINING AREAS
The company’s industrial director, José Antonio Molina, also participated in the event, detailing the trajectory followed by the company since the creation of the Victorio Luzuriaga plant in Tafalla, in 1968, until its transformation into a cooperative. “Today we have around 900 employees, 90 % are members and most of our sales are destined to the European (84 %) and North American (10 %) export markets”, he informed.
This was followed by the signing of the collaboration agreement, which specifies the Intensive Vocational Training program that the company will start in September. The agreement was ratified by the president of Tafalla Iron Foundry, Lucas Álvarez, and Carlos Pernaut, director of CIP Tafalla. The former listed the different areas where the students will carry out their internships as mechanics, electronics, welding, industrial robotics, production programming, machining, administration and IT. “This agreement arises as a response to the new educational regulations that will come into force in the next course and of which our company has participated as a pilot in this 2024,” Álvarez shelled. He also stressed that the cooperative wants to be “an example and pioneer in Dual Vocational Training”. “We want to transform society and, for that, there is education,” he added.
Meanwhile, Pernaut, on behalf of CIP Tafalla, thanked the cooperative for having “opened its doors wide” and reminded the students present that “between 25% and 50% of the curriculum will be done in the company”, where they will also be evaluated.
“STRATEGIC” FOR NAVARRA
The Regional Minister of Education stressed, for his part, that the Navarre Executive considers Dual Vocational Training as a fundamental “strategic pillar” for the future development and growth of the region. “Examples like this are very important to improve the employability of people and the adequacy of training to the needs of companies,” he said.
The meeting concluded with the delivery to Gimeno of a cast piece in memory of his visit to Tafalla, in which several students who are doing their internships in the company participated along with two former students of CIP Tafalla and current partners of the cooperative, Ainhoa Ozcariz and Eneko Ongay. Afterwards, the guests were given a guided tour of the facilities.
