this Castellón’s Mediterranean newspaper presented the business awards of the year in front of nearly four hundred people last Tuesday. The two main winners were Luis Hernández, president of Grespania, and Pepe Pellicer of APE Grupo, known for his business career. I was unaware of the existence of these two companies, which are leaders in each field of expertise in the ceramic industry and have a wide international presence. Grespania has 842 employees and APE with a turnover of 60 million 150. Pellicer was one of the pioneering Spanish businessmen selling in China, one of the 120 countries where the Castellón company sells today. He tells how he first set foot in Shanghai in 1992 with the sale of 50×50 cm red ceramic pieces. Previously, the company indirectly exported to the Asian giant through its representatives and stockists in Hong Kong and Singapore, where it entered in the seventies. Pellicer (aged 81) remembers his first big adventure was in Australia after he started selling in Europe in the late sixties. They even sold it in Vietnam and Cambodia. Today, second-generation sons take the reins of the company.
Spain is a country full of great and unknown business stories like those of APE Grupo. A few months ago, I visited Manuel Puigdemont, owner of Pordamsa, an Empordà porcelain company founded in 1975. That year, Puigdemont—despite being born in Amer and having no affiliation with the former president of the Generalitat de Catalunya—had such an opinion. The plates we eat do not have to be round. It all depends on what you eat. Today it is the official supplier to some of the world’s best restaurant and hotel chains, such as the Four Seasons, and its design center on the outskirts of La Bisbal d’Empordà (Girona) is a visiting destination for the world’s greatest chefs. together with himself and his team, he designs plates and kitchenware for his gastronomic creations.
In many cases, business journalism is too obsessed — of course, to have to — decoding the strategies of large Ibex corporations and luxury family groups. It is the tractor elements that move and pull the Spanish brand inside and out, both because of its publicity and the need to explain its projects to build continued trust among their stakeholders and stakeholders. But we are aware that there are hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized companies that sustain the business fabric and represent 99% of companies. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Industry in Spain, there are 1,307,634 companies with between 1 and 249 employees. The 50 to 249 employees considered medium amount to 25,017 employing 2.4 million people. With more than 250 employees, Spain has 4,977 companies employing 5.8 million employees.
The success and progress of a region depends on the cooperation and healthy competition that can exist between companies of different sizes operating in the relevant sectors. The advocacy and support of clusters, which are highly specialized areas that often stand out in the Mediterranean Corridor, should remain essential. For example, in Castellón’s ceramics business, the most popular and well-known business groups are Fernando Roig of the Soriano and Colonques families, and Pamesa, the giant owned by Porcelanosa. their image is the Princes. Pamesa is the European leader in ceramic production and follows a policy of continuous growth; but the owner also knew how to bet on his land in another way. At the event held in Castellón, Fernando Roig was rewarded for the achievement of another of his property, which is even better known internationally than Pamesa: Villarreal Club de Fútbol, a business and sports success story that fell in love with the whole world. Clubs owned by Arab sheikhs sprang into Spain and Europe amid the economic frenzy. Without exception, we are all fans of yellow submarines.
Castellón is the great center of the Spanish pottery cluster. A world in the late seventies experiencing a crisis that forced it to transform. Today, amid rising energy prices – gas is essential to making ceramics – it is again an industry suffering and awaiting changes in energy policies. ERTEs and the fall in production, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, ensued. They may be crying and lying in bed begging for money to rain from the sky, but they don’t. Pamesa has already begun to sign alliances for the development of hydrogen as a gradual replacement for gas. An option that will not only benefit the Castellón giant, but will also serve to transform the cost structure of the entire industry.