Danish medical-device maker Coloplast inaugurated a factory in Felgueiras, in the Tâmega e Sousa region east of Porto, on Thursday, 29 October. It is the company’s largest production site to date. The two-floor, 50,000 m² plant makes continence-care products. Portuguese press, including Lusa-based reports, put the investment at about €100 million. Production has already started, the plant employs about 350 people, and that number is expected to pass 800 within three years.
Built in just over two years
Coloplast began planning the factory in 2021, and construction began in the summer of 2024. The plant stands in the Alto das Barrancas industrial zone in Revinhade, Felgueiras. In just over two years, the company says, it finished the building, built a local organisation of more than 300 people and started production. Representatives of national and local government attended Thursday’s ceremony with Coloplast executives and staff.
“Above all, Portugal has a qualified and highly specialised workforce, as well as a competitive cost level,” said Allan Rasmussen, Coloplast’s executive vice president for Global Operations. He also pointed to Portugal’s location in Europe, “where most of our users currently are”, and to its supply of renewable electricity and its goal of carbon neutrality by 2045.
The Hungary question
The location matters for Coloplast’s supply chain. Until now, Rasmussen said, the group’s European manufacturing has been concentrated in Hungary, and Felgueiras lets it diversify. Coloplast runs large-scale plants in Hungary, China and Costa Rica, specialised sites in the United States, France, Germany, Sweden and Iceland, and an innovation and pilot-production unit in Denmark. With Felgueiras running, the company says it has enough capacity to meet its targets for the current strategy period to 2030 without building any more factories. That makes the Portuguese plant Coloplast’s last new factory for at least the rest of the decade.
Frank Berg Rasmussen, vice president for production in Portugal, said the company had had “a very constructive dialogue with the Portuguese authorities, both nationally and locally” from the start, and that it is “committed to welcoming more colleagues in Felgueiras”. Felgueiras Magazine reported on 28 October that the plant is still recruiting. Jornal de Notícias reported that the municipality is preparing childcare places to support the new workforce.
AICEP’s medtech pitch
The investment agency AICEP supported the project. Its president, Ana Casaca, called Coloplast’s decision “a strong vote of confidence in our country’s capacity to attract and deliver strategic industrial investments”. She said it was “particularly significant” in medical devices, a sector where advanced production, highly qualified talent and strict quality standards decide where companies invest.
Why it matters for the corridor
Felgueiras is now one of the largest Nordic manufacturing projects in Portugal. When it reaches 800 jobs, it will rank alongside Boliden’s Neves-Corvo mine and NKT’s Esposende cable plant among the biggest Nordic-owned industrial employers in the country. Coloplast’s stated reasons are skilled labour, costs, a European location and renewable power. These are the same factors other Nordic manufacturers weigh when they look for a second European production base outside Central and Eastern Europe. For Portuguese suppliers in the north, a plant this size also creates demand for packaging, moulded components, maintenance and logistics. For Danish medtech, the plant puts Portugal on the production side, not only the sales side.
Sources: Coloplast press release “Coloplast opens new factory in Portugal to support global growth” (29 October 2026); Felgueiras Magazine and Vale do Sousa TV (29 October 2026). Quotes translated from the Portuguese version of the release.