Family-owned

On Monday, May 21, we headed towards 2 more company visits around Lisbon. The first was Groupo  Portucel Soporcel where the CEO spoke to us, which was a wonderful treat.  Portucel is a paper manufacturer, which makes the #1 selling paper in the world, Navigator Universal. They are 1st in Europe and 6th in the world for uncoated wood free paper  and are 1st in Europe and 4th in the world 1st European company for eucalyptus pulp. They have about 2300 employees, of which 22% have PhD, Masters of Science or other degrees. Portucel accounts for 5% of all Portugal exports to US and 3% to Europe. Next we visited the Jose de Mello Group, which is a family-owned company (as many are in Portugal). One of the oldest family members (he shares ownership with his brother and cousins - 12 in total) spoke to us which was fascinating. His great, great grandfather started the company in 1865 but during the revolution in the 70's the government took their business away and his father started a new company, which is thriving today. They have 6 businesses within the group that total around €4B in assets, which range from the chemical industry to nanotechnology to solutions & sustainability. After a group of us decided to walk down to the river and have dinner together...again, a wonderful and memorable experience. We are making friendships that will last a lifetime! On May 22 we woke up early (430 am) to go to Porto and visit 2 more companies. The first was Amorim, a cork producer. Besides touring the factory, which was fascinating because most of it was manual labor (the high end wine producers asked for their cork stoppers to be made by hand so the company obliged)...cork increased 8.7% last year. The marketing director had this to say: "Sustainability is about people, planet and profits - you don't have to sacrifice one of them." A few fun facts about cork:  nothing is wasted in production - it creates renewable energy because they don't cut don the trees;  US is largest consumer of wine; Amorim exports to over 100 countries; 3.5 billion cork stoppers are produced annually and Amorim has 27% market share; cork flooring used in Gaudi's cathedral (which we saw in Barcelona). After we went back to the hotel to change for our evening...the bus took us down to the Douro River to snap a few photos and enjoy the scenery...which was simply breathtaking. Or next stop was Taylor Fladgate, producers of port wine since 1692. We met with one of the family members (8th generation), who gave us a tour of their facility. Then we did a tasting and had an amazing group dinner - the view of the river and Porto was amazing!! On May 23 we had our last company visit to Sonae. The highlight of this visit was the LEEDS gold standard building they had built. It was an interesting tour (except the fact that we were in the employees work space - it was a bit awkward). The lights change throughout the day with the sun and clouds...so they are always saving the indoor lights when the natural sunlight will work. The roof is designed to not only reflect light but also to collect rain water for use in the building. Lastly, we ended the day with a visit to Sandeman, another port wine producer, but since neither of us love port wine the highlight for us was a view of the Douro River Valley - it was beautiful!!