The CDTI Innovation promotes the positioning of the capacities of the Spanish industry in the large international scientific facilities and the Big Science world

The Strategic Plan 2024-2027 of the CDTI Innovation places the accompaniment to the Spanish science industry within the vector of Growth linked to R+D+I, oriented to companies that already innovate and need to scale their capacities towards challenges of greater complexity and international scope, which is complemented by two specific objectives. On the one hand, to improve the technological training of Spanish companies in the sector by supporting R&D&I projects with potential for future contracting in large international facilities with Spanish contribution and in the Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructures (ICTS) of the national map. The second objective is to optimize the technological returns of the facilities in which Spain participates as a member country, management that the CDTI deploys as an Industrial Liaison Office (ILO) in organizations such as CERN, lESO, SKAO, ITER Organization, F4E, EURATOM, Einstein Telescopeo ESS.

Likewise, the Plan also proposes the strengthening of the role of Spanish ICTS as a mechanism for validation and scaling of technological and industrial solutions, through a specific contracting platform and the instrument of Pre-commercial Public Procurement aimed at these facilities. This orientation already produces results: in 2025, Spain exceeded 100 million euros in technological contracts associated with large international scientific facilities and the first edition of the Big Science Industry Forum Spain was also held, an initiative of the CDTI in collaboration with Ineustar aimed at consolidating at a national level the Spanish ecosystem of great science around a relational recurrent model aligned with similar initiatives of European scope such as Big Science Business Forum.

The CDTI Innovation deploys multiple actions and services that connect Spanish companies with the opportunities of Great Science. The Catalogue of Industrial Capacities for Large Scientific Installations of the CDTI already includes more than 100 Spanish companies with proven experience in particle physics, structure of matter, astronomy or fusion, among other specialization disciplines. Added to this tool are the ICTS Unified Tender Repository, the Tender Manual and the distribution lists organized by technologies (civil works, mechanics and optomechanics, power electronics, cryogenics and vacuum, remote handling and robotics, diagnostics and instrumentation, among others), through which the CDTI channels opportunities to the qualified industrial fabric.

SKA: Spanish industry certifies state-of-the-art capabilities

The SKA Observatory (SKAO), one of the largest scientific engineering projects of the 21st century, builds the largest distributed radio telescope on Earth in South Africa and Australia. The CDTI Innovation participates as a Delegate in the Subcommittee on Purchases of SKAO, in addition to exercising as an ILO before the Spanish industry.

In this context, the Spanish companies EOSOL and COMPOXI have just passed the Factory Acceptance Test of the construction project of the sub-reflectors of the SKA Mid telescope, a milestone that validates product and production process and marks the transition to serial production of the 44 contracted units. The sub-reflector, a 4.5 metre structure in metallised composite material, should operate during the telescope’s 50 years of useful life in the Karoo Desert. The production will be carried out in the new facilities of Compoxi in Girona, a factory of 3,000 square meters with clean rooms, autoclave and metrology laboratory.

This contract, partially financed by the European Union through NextGenerationEU, is a new milestone in the industrial return scheme in which the CDTI Innovation is focused for Spanish companies as qualified suppliers of critical components in scientific projects of global reference and with productive capacity installed in Spain.

Future Circular Collider of CERN

A milestone of similar relevance is the recent preliminary market consultation launched by CDTI’s Office of Innovative Public Procurement for CERN’s Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee). From another strategic line of approach, the CDTI anticipates early large projects of the next decade and promotes the development of a candidate prototype of a representative section of the FCC-ee, a challenge posed by the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics (IGFAE), a mixed center of the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Xunta de Galicia.

This is the fourth pre-commercial public purchase of the CDTI aimed at large scientific facilities, in a trajectory that already exceeds 80 million euros of investment mobilized, with an estimated industrial return for Spain in the whole of the FCC-ee around 1 billion euros.

The FCC-ee, a 91-kilometer circular accelerator that will follow the LHC in the 2040s, is a priority of the 2026 update of the European Particle Physics Strategy and the CDTI initiative addresses Pre-Commercial Public Procurement as a validation and scaling mechanism aimed at Spanish ICTS and large international scientific facilities. The technologies developed will transcend the FCC itself: they will have application in fourth-generation European synchrotrons such as ALBA, the Einstein Telescope, IFMIF-DONES (under construction in Granada) and future medical accelerators of hadrontherapy.

A reference agent for the next decade

The SKA and FCC cases represent an excellent result for the Spanish industry derived from the action of early identification of the technological opportunities of the major international scientific projects, training the Spanish industry to compete in them and accompanying the entire cycle from market consultation to serial production and the exploitation of industrial returns. In line with the forecasts of the Strategic Plan 2024-2027, an intensification of this Great Science CDTI agenda is already anticipated, with the permanent expansion of the catalogue of companies with supply capacity, new Pre-Commercial Public Procurement actions aimed at Spanish ICTS, the strengthening of cooperation with CIEMAT in nuclear fusion and superconductivity and greater cooperation between the scientific and industrial dimensions of these infrastructures, with periodic meetings between Spanish researchers and supplier companies.

In an international context in which strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty occupy a central place in the European agenda, the positioning of the Spanish industry in Big Science acquires added relevance. The CDTI Innovation, as a national industrial contact point for the main Big Science infrastructures in which Spain participates, consolidates its role as a driving agent, mobilizer and international reference for the Spanish industry to continue expanding its presence in the most cutting-edge scientific and technological projects on the planet.
 

About the CDTI Innovation

The Center for Technological Development and Innovation, CDTI E.P.E. It is the innovation agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, whose objective is the promotion of technological innovation in the business environment. The mission of the CDTI is to ensure that the Spanish business fabric generates and transforms scientific and technical knowledge into globally competitive, sustainable and inclusive growth. In 2025, within the framework of the Strategic Plan 2024-2027, the CDTI provided 2,423 million euros of support to Spanish companies and startups.

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