KREAN has signed the design, execution project, works direction and construction management of this new Mondragon Unibertsitatea centre in Arrasate (Gipuzkoa). HIREKIN will develop technologies, products or industrial production processes from the concept phases to the scaling and launching phases. KREAN is also a member of the HIREKIN sponsoring board.

Mondragon Goi Eskola Politeknikoa MGEP has entrusted KREAN with the creation of HIREKIN, a new centre conceived as a space for collaboration between companies, entrepreneurs, research staff and students from both the Higher Polytechnic School and other faculties of Mondragon Unibertsitatea or third parties, who will work in favour of a sustainable industry and a more competitive economy. All of them will work in a network to develop entrepreneurship and intra-entrepreneurship projects that will enable the necessary transition towards a sustainable industry.

This industrial entrepreneurship centre aims to make the industrial sector more sustainable, decarbonised and digitalised. In it, companies and entrepreneurs, researchers and students will work together to develop technologies, products and industrial production processes, from the invention stages to the scaling-up and start-up phases. It will therefore be a space for collaboration.

HIREKIN, the only one of its kind in Spain, will be the benchmark centre for the development of sustainable industrial entrepreneurship projects. It is led by the Higher Polytechnic School of Mondragon Unibertsitatea, and has a network of socio-economic agents and institutions that promote the project, KREAN being one of them, participating with different roles in the advisory board to collaborate in the strategy; as sponsors, through the granting of scholarships for students and entrepreneurship projects; and as promoters, to attract projects and contribute their own vision in governance, always from cooperative values.

The complex, with 6,000 square metres of facilities, has a large industrial space where prototyping, simulation and experimentation equipment has been installed, and has space for workshops and computer rooms, as well as other spaces for co-creation and meeting rooms, among others.

The new HIREKIN building has the ERAS certificate for sustainable building as it has been built using reusable and biodegradable materials, solar panels have been installed, as well as intelligent systems to improve energy efficiency, solutions for water efficiency and closing the water cycle, recovery of waste heat from nearby industrial facilities, among many other measures.

HIREKIN was inaugurated on 15 July 2024 in a ceremony presided over by the Lehendakari Imanol Pradales and attended by various authorities and representatives of the companies and organisations that support the centre.