INDUSTRY
Can you tell us about the operations of Powershield and the services you provide?
Powershield currently has two business units: human and electronic security. Today, almost 70% of our business is human security and 30% electronic. We want to balance that to make it more even because the human resources in Portugal for such work is difficult. There are no qualified people because the wages are extremely low. We have 1,100 employees in Portugal, including continental Portugal and Madeira, after four years of operations. Electronics are not just the future, but are omnipresent, and our clients demand this from us because we are mainly in the sector of distribution such as supermarkets. Everything will be automated, and because of that, we seek to do something different and put in more automation ourselves.
What sets Powershield apart from its competitors?
Because of our experience in Charon, a company with almost 2,500 employees, I saw that big companies do not work because processes are extremely slow, while companies like Powershield speak directly to clients to provide quick solutions. We have nine people in the structure and are extremely focused on the needs of our clients. Our response time is extremely short.
How did the company get its start?
The company got started in 1741 as a small pottery factory in Lisbon producing bricks and rooftops. With the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755, the demand for decorative tiles grew significantly due to the rebuilding of the city. At the end of the 18th century, we decided to follow the market and started producing glazed and decorative tiles and have not looked back ever since. We have always tried to achieve the highest artistic value in our products regarding drawings and techniques. Since the beginning of the last century, we have been investing in another countries. By 1920, we had sales agents in Angola, Brazil, New York, LA, and London.
Where do you export to?
We will close 2018 with exports at nearly 85%. Our main market is the US; half of our exports have gone to the US since the 1950s and 1960s. We had a fire in the factory in 1971, followed by the Portuguese revolution in 1974. Those were tough times for the factory, and some customers in the US offered us funds to help us keep the factory working.
What have been the company's key achievements in Portugal?
The company was established in 2009 based on the expertise my partners and I had acquired in the construction market. In the last 10 years, TexCoat has focused on a specific niche, namely small construction projects and rehabilitation. The construction market no longer grows at the pace or volume it used to, and several large construction companies closed down, while many small companies established themselves in the market. This made us direct our business toward rehabilitation, and today we have a vast portfolio of clients. There is a great deal of work in the rehabilitation space. We increased our employees from 30 to 120 and cover the entire national territory and islands, not to mention Venezuela and Oman.
How do you see the market right now?
Our work has been based out of Portugal, and our contacts come to us. Our company structure is not rigid or hierarchical, which differentiates us. We do not have representatives abroad but respond to all enquiries. Business here is speeding up, which has prevented us from forming partnerships in other countries. Our main partners today are medium-sized enterprises, and we are focused on the area of rehabilitating buildings, offices, and stores.
What have been some important milestones of the company?
The company was founded by six graduates from the aerospace engineering department at Lisbon Technical University who wanted to tackle problems across a variety of specialties. We had control, software, and structural engineering and a small team that could oversee complex problems. We secured a contract to manage the entire supply chain of a fairly complex project, which enabled us to demonstrate that we could deliver complex products. We started by getting involved in small technology development contracts focused on traditional European Space Agency applications for scientific missions and observations satellites. Recently there has been an important transformation in terms of space activities. Start-ups are building small rockets that significantly bring down the costs of sending things into space, and smaller companies can now integrate small satellites and do something meaningful with significantly less expensive technology.
How is your Infante space industry project coming along?
We are working with a group of construction companies in Portugal to build a complete micro satellite. We chose to develop an optical sensor, a small telescope. There is an emphasis on it being a compact and inexpensive instrument, since the satellite is small, and it will piggyback onto a larger mission.
What have been Salmon's biggest achievements over the years?
It was set up in 1944 to import luxury goods such as portable radios, costume jewelry, and nylon stockings. It was just a small office in Lisbon, but over the years the company grew considerably and rode the wave of industrial growth in Portugal in the 1960s and pre-revolution 1970s. Since then, we have acquired a few companies and entered into joint ventures; currently, we only have two joint ventures, with OMYA and ASK Chemicals. We have been recovering steadily since 2011, our worst year, having grown 250%. We have hired more salespeople and are acquiring a certain position in sectors where our presence had diminished.
How have the company's two joint ventures evolved?
We originally did water treatment and foundries with ASK, but today the focus is only on foundries. Salmon supplies all the services to ASK in terms of accounting, logistics, and staff. Its success predominately depends on the health of the automotive industry. With OMYA, our JV OMYA Mineral Portuguesa (OMP) focuses on two sectors: coatings/construction and plastics. In those two sectors, we cover around 85% of the market demand for ground calcium carbonate powder and have an extremely strong position in Portugal.
How would you assess the group's recent performance?
Imperial Brands has five main lines of business, and Imperial Tobacco is one of them. Others include Premium Cigars, New Generation Products, and Logista. Imperial Brands owns 51% of Logista, a listed company in Spain. In Portugal, Logista distributes tobacco products from main manufacturers, and the company is managed independently from Imperial Tobacco. Regarding our group's premium cigar business, Empor is the company in charge of running the business in Portugal. It is consistently innovating with high-quality products and leading the attractive segment of premium cigars.
How do tobacco giants like Imperial Tobacco successfully operate in a world newly conscious about health?
Quoting our CEO Alison Cooper, the product we sell may be controversial, but the way we do business is not. We are extremely compliant, and our code of conduct is very demanding. Tobacco is on most regulators' radars, but never forget the eternal tension between health and finance departments. Our sector is one of the major contributors to the economies of the countries in which we operate. In Portugal, tax collection from the tobacco sector, excluding VAT, is EUR1.4 billion, seven times more than tax collected from alcohol.
INDUSTRY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Focus: Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries
Making an Impact
Established in 1996, the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP) is a mechanism geared at linking and sharing the experience of Lusophone countries. Besides Portugal, this includes Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
read articleFocus
Don’t Mind the Disruption
Having won the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest, Lisbon hosted the 2018 event. The relevance? Well, the contest began back in 1956 as a showcase not only of song, but of then-nascent live television broadcast technology. Today, Portugal is on the cutting edge of new technological developments.
read articleInterview
João Pedro Soeiro de Matos Fernandes , Minister , Environment and Energy Transition
The Ministry for the Environment and Energy Transition is focusing on decarbonizing the economy, valuing the territory and its habitats, and striving for a more circular use of the country's resources.
read articleInterview
António Braz Costa , General Manager, Portuguese Technological Centre for the Textile & Clothing Industries (CITEVE)
CITEVE has transformed the industry by promoting value addition, adopting the latest technologies, and ensuring the highest standards of environmental sustainability.
read articleFocus: New airport
Right Time to Seize Missed Opportunities
Portugal has seen its air traffic figures increase by as much as 80% in the last five years. As a result, its transportation infrastructure, and Lisbon's airport in particular, cannot cope with the rising numbers. A new airport project that will turn a military base into a commercial airport is now under discussion to bring much-needed relief to air traffic.
read articleInterview
Germano de Sousa , President, Grupo Germano de Sousa
Grupo Germano de Sousa's success can best be summed up by its understanding that science and medicine only really progress when technological development is combined with a deeper respect for human values and professional ethics.
read articleInterview
Isabel Capeloa Gil , Rector, Universidade Católica
Having pioneered the introduction of multiple subject areas to Portugal's tertiary education scene, Universidade Católica is aspiring to establish the country's first private medical school and introduce cutting-edge digital transformation.
read articleInterview
Carlos Guillén Gestoso , President, Escola Universitária de Ciências Empresariais, Saúde, Tecnologias e Engenharia & President, Atlantica University
Atlantica University differentiates through its company-university model and an MBA program in partnership with the University of California, Berkley, among other initiatives, to produce practical theoreticians.
read articleFocus: Public teaching staff
An Age-old Problem
Over a decade of austerity measures combined with an ageing population have seen the average age of the Portuguese public teaching staff progressively climb to one of the highest in the OECD. With frozen salaries, an extended retirement age, and precarious working conditions, today the sector faces one of its biggest challenge yet.
read articleInterview
Pedro Queiroz , General Manager, Federation of the Portuguese Agri-Food Industry (FIPA)
Portugal's economic recovery has seen its F&B sector emerge with annual turnovers of EUR16 billion, thanks to FIPA's undeterred focus on stable policies, excellent nutrition standards, and sustainability.
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