General contractor and developer Masterbuild announced that it has started work on the new Research Center in Green Aerospatial Technologies in Craiova, southern Romania.

The new TGA Center in Craiova, unique in the region, will significantly increase Romania's research, development and innovation capacity in the aerospace industry, as well as Romania's collaboration in major European Union research projects, said Catalin Nae, general manager of the National Institute for Aerospace Research (INCAS) Elie Carafoli.

The total investment in the building itself is worth more than €17mn. The project is co-financed through the European Regional Development Fund, coordinated by INCAS. 

The centre is located in a highly industrial area, which will benefit both from the synergies created by this new development and from over 300 locally generated jobs.

The TGA Aerospace Technologies Center responds to a real need at the level of Romanian industry, in which the capacity to develop, mature and validate green technologies for the aerospace domain is essential in the context of promoting the aerospace sector as a smart specialisation field and ensuring the competitiveness of this industrial sector.

The project creates the premises for participation in large-scale European partnerships, opens opportunities for collaboration in various projects of the Clean Sky 2 and Horizon 2020 programme and implicitly increases Romania's involvement in European research.