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Company Requirements

To be able to apply for this financing line, your company must meet the following requirements

• Be a corporation with its own legal personality.
• Be an SME (fewer than 250 employees and revenue not exceeding 50 million euros or total assets not exceeding 43 million euros) or a small midcap (no more than 499 employees and a turnover not exceeding 100 million euros or a balance sheet total not exceeding 86 million euros).
• The funded project must be carried out in Catalonia: in the case of an investment project, the investment must be made in Catalonia; for all other projects, the operational facility where the project is carried out must be located in Catalonia. It is not sufficient to have a tax domicile in Catalonia if the project is carried out elsewhere.
• The project must pursue at least one of these objectives: to increase productive investment (acquisition of productive assets or expansion of production facilities), boost competitiveness (revenue growth, growth in international sales, or increased margins / new products with above-average margins), or promote job retention and creation (workforce growth).
• The investment components must not have been physically accepted or fully completed as of the date of loan approval by IFEM.
• Companies from all sectors are eligible, except for fishing and aquaculture, primary agricultural production (unless the project is intended solely for investments in the processing or marketing of agricultural products), and activities directly linked to exports.
• If the project involves multiple affiliated companies, all of them must demonstrate compliance with these requirements.
• The company’s ability to generate a return is assessed before the transaction is approved. The following situations, although not listed as explicit grounds for exclusion in the program’s regulations, will in practice result in the denial of the application:
• Not having negative equity or being subject to dissolution due to losses as of the application date.
• Not having recorded continuous losses in the last three closed fiscal years.
• Having sufficient financial capacity to meet all obligations arising from the financing and the resources necessary to carry out the business on a continuous basis.
• Not be listed in delinquency registries (RAI, ASNEF, or similar) nor have any credit issues with the ICF group.
• In practice, this requires having at least two closed fiscal years available in order to assess the evolution of equity and financial results.

Limits

The following limits apply to this financing line

• De minimis aid: When the transaction qualifies under this scheme, the total amount of de minimis aid granted to a single company may not exceed €300,000 over any three-year period. In the event of a merger or acquisition, the prior de minimis aid received by all companies involved is taken into account.
• Block Exemption Regulations: When the action falls under Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014 (Articles 14, 17, 36, or 38) or Regulation (EU) 2022/2472 (Article 17), neither the amount nor the maximum aid intensity established by the applicable regulation may be exceeded for the same project or eligible expenses.
• Form of aid: The aid takes the form of the gross grant equivalent derived from the difference between the interest rate granted and the market reference rate; IFEM calculates this and records it in the loan agreement.