LOGISTICS
Global firms are taking the logistics expertise they honed over many years in their domestic markets and around the world and implementing it with impressive results in Portugal.
DPD Group was one of the first to invest in Portugal. In 1997, we made an investment in Jet Services, a family-owned French company with 20 subsidiaries around the world. This was the beginning of the international strategy of the La Poste group outside France. Around 20 years ago, the group realized postal activity would fall and started diversifying into both parcels and banking activities. It later founded the Postal Bank (La Banque Postale), a French business, in addition to a holding company called GeoPost for the parcel business. The first acquisition of GeoPost in the La Poste group was Jet Services, and Portugal was one of the 20 subsidiaries. Portuguese operations started in 1987 before being bought by La Poste in 1997. Back then, La Poste was already an international player competing with the Portuguese Post. We grew organically by being the first company to offer next-morning deliveries and full domestic parcel tracking. Similarly, we were the first to launch cash-on-delivery service. At present, we have 600 parcel shops across Portugal, making us the number-one postal company by a fair margin. Parallel to this strategy of innovation and organic growth, we made some acquisitions in Portugal. One of our biggest achievements in the past five years was acquiring SEUR, the number-one Spanish company. Similarly, we acquired two more companies in Portugal. Including these, the DPD Group ranks first in Portugal with around EUR70 million revenue, 18 million parcels per year, and more than 1,000 employees.
The company was founded in Portugal in 1982. In 2016, it was rebranded as Bolloré Logistics to have a better connection to the Bolloré group. The latter was established in 1822 and is today ranked among the top 500 companies worldwide. Divided into three fields of activity, transport logistics, medial, and electricity storage solutions, it generates more than EUR18 billion in turnover and is present in 130 countries with 82,000 employees worldwide. In Portugal, the company's primary activity is in transport and logistics and managed from its three offices in Lisbon and Porto with more than 100 full-time employees and generating more than EUR24 million in turnover. The company's Portugal's portfolio includes air, sea, road, and logistics services. Currently, the company has more than 2,300 active customers, 82% of which are of Portuguese origin. Our main markets are Angola, São Tomé, Timor, and the US, especially when it comes to our main sectors of activity—food and beverage, aerospace, healthcare, special projects, and defense—which together represent more than 80% of the company's turnover. We do not, as a rule, receive any governmental support, thought we frequently engage in public tenders, especially to support the Portuguese military in their logistic operations overseas. In order to boost transport and logistics activity in Portugal, the country needs to take better strategic advantage of its location, territorial waters, and manpower. Due to its historical connection to the sea and adaptability of its people, Portugal should be the first and last point of entry of Europe.
The company started in 1992, and in the first 10 years, we relied heavily on outsourcing intermediary services to third parties. We subsequently started to develop our own skills in the automotive and logistics industries and create value ourselves for customers. We started mostly in the automotive industry here, namely finished vehicle logistics and spare parts for the PSA brand. We then expanded to other areas during our second decade here such as air, sea, and road, and continued in automotive logistics development with car parking compounds. We developed new special services such as the GEFCO Special, a tailor made ultra-urgent service designed to tackle customers' most urgent needs. I am pleased with that development over the last two years. We now have our own car-parking compound and have invested in infrastructure that will allow us to develop further coverage across the country. The GEFCO Group had a fairly successful performance over the last few years, and GEFCO Portugal was no exception. Our clients benefit from the extensive experience that RZD, which owns 75% of our company, has in the train transport industry, which is a plus for GEFCO because we did not have such expertise before. It is also exciting for our employees to know that companies as important as RZD in Russia would like a share of GEFCO. RZD's acquisition was in 2012, and the company has improved its results and is worth more since then.
LOGISTICS
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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