Blanca Sorigué, chief executive of the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona, has set out a case that the future of foreign direct investment lies in connected business ecosystems rather than traditional industrial estates, in a commentary published by Investment Monitor. The argument arrives at a moment when governments and regional bodies across Europe are reassessing what physical infrastructure alone can deliver to attract and retain international capital.
Blanca Sorigué FDI ecosystems: the case against the traditional model
The headline framing, that ecosystems rather than industrial estates should anchor FDI strategy, is a direct challenge to the way many countries have historically packaged inward investment propositions. For decades, the dominant offer to overseas companies has been land, buildings, tax relief, and logistics connectivity. Sorigué’s position, as set out under her byline for Investment Monitor, is that this is no longer enough.
Free zones occupy a particular place in that debate. They have long been used as instruments of economic policy, offering regulatory and fiscal advantages within a defined perimeter to attract manufacturing, logistics and trade activity. The Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona, which Sorigué leads, is one of Europe’s older examples of this model. Founded in the early twentieth century, it operates one of Spain’s principal free trade zones and has in recent years repositioned itself around innovation, digital infrastructure and the hosting of large-scale industry events including the Mobile World Congress.
That repositioning is itself an illustration of the broader shift Sorigué is describing. A zone defined purely by its perimeter and its tax status is a passive container. A zone that connects companies to talent pipelines, research institutions, regulatory sandboxes and peer networks becomes something closer to an active participant in the businesses it hosts.
What the ecosystem model demands from free zones
The ecosystem argument places demands on zone operators that go well beyond property management. Attracting a company to a site is one task; creating conditions in which that company can grow, recruit, collaborate and innovate is quite another. It requires coordination with universities, with municipal authorities, with transport planners, and often with the kinds of sector-specific bodies that can convene the right mix of companies around a shared technological or commercial interest.
For FDI specifically, the implications are considerable. Investment decisions at the scale that free zones and special economic areas are designed to attract are rarely driven by the cost of land alone. Site selectors and their clients weigh workforce availability, proximity to customers and suppliers, access to research and development capacity, and the quality of the surrounding business environment. An industrial estate answers some of those questions. An ecosystem, in principle, answers all of them.
The distinction matters for policy too. Governments that frame their FDI offer around ecosystems are committing to a more sustained and complex set of interventions than those who simply zone land and offer incentives. The payoff, in theory, is investment that is harder to move: companies embedded in a web of local relationships and dependencies are less likely to relocate when a cheaper offer appears elsewhere.
Sorigué’s position at the head of one of Europe’s established free zone organisations lends practical weight to the argument. The Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona has had to navigate precisely this transition, from a zone defined by its trade and customs function to one that competes on the basis of what it can offer to technology companies, event organisers, and businesses seeking a southern European hub with strong logistics and digital infrastructure.
The full commentary, including Sorigué’s specific proposals and analysis, is available to registered users on Investment Monitor’s platform. Her argument, in outline, puts the Blanca Sorigué FDI ecosystems case clearly: the competition for international capital has moved on, and the zones and regions that recognise that shift earliest are most likely to benefit from it.
