The fifth edition of the "Euskadi Avanza" awards, held on 28 February 2022, recognised the decisive contribution of entrepreneurs to the Basque Country. The award went to Antón Pradera, chairman of CIE Automotive, for his business career. EL CORREO highlighted how "the result of his management at the helm of CIE Automotive represents values and objectives that Basque industry has been pursuing for years, albeit not always successfully. He has shown that a company can be large and at the same time maintain its roots in the Basque Country. It has also shown that it is possible to permanently conjugate the verb 'to buy', as opposed to the custom of recent years, which has tended to use the infinitive 'to sell'. And all this in a sector as fiercely competitive as the automobile sector".

In a look back over his career, during the celebration of the awards, they explained how Antón "has piloted a unique project since 1996, which began with the creation of a company with a convoluted name -Instituto Sectorial de Promoción y gestión de Empresas, INSSEC-, which sowed its seed with the takeover of Industrias Egaña. A small company in the Biscayan town of Zaldibar, with barely a hundred workers, which would thus become the foundation on which to build a dream. Barely a quarter of a century later, that dream has become a company that stands out on the stock market with a value of over 3,000 million euros; that has a hundred production centres in 16 countries and that has become one of the national leaders in the automotive sector. The hundred or so people at Egaña have now become a workforce of 25,000 people. In common with other automotive component manufacturers, CIE Automotive has been forced to invest where the automotive companies have their main production plants. Despite this, it has retained control of the technology and also kept its decision-making centres in the Basque Country. If one has to choose a model to imitate for the rest of the Basque companies, the one led by Antón Pradera is close to excellence. His commitment has been far removed from that fashion that seems to have taken hold in the business world, where short or medium-term profit is overly rewarded and long-term profit is disregarded. This is now defined as sustainability. A course that is vital to ensure the survival of industrial companies and which is the best antidote to relocation. One of the dangers of globalisation".

In addition to CIE Automotive's Chairman, Mercedes, Globe Testing and Ternua were the recipients of awards in this fifth edition in the categories of "Company of the Year Award", "Newcomer Award" and "SME of the Year Award", respectively.

Link to the complete news of the awards in EL CORREO: https://www.elcorreo.com/economia/premios-avanza-euskadi-ternua-mercedes-cie-automotive-eneritz-zubizarreta-20220228173132-nt.html

Link to the interview after the reception of the award to Antón in EL CORREO: https://www.elcorreo.com/economia/gestion-mas-importante-que-el-conocimiento-anton-pradera-premios-euskadi-avanza-20220228192926-nt.html

Link to video (Spanish version):
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ljdJ0y-trYM