Text: Julian Nieto
Federico Beltrán Galindo, winner of the Businessman of the Year Award in these first awards from Banco Sabadell in Malaga, is president of Famadesa, one of the most important meat companies in Spain.
Federico Beltrán has been, to name just a few examples, president of the Málaga Football Club, councilor in the city council and advisor of the financial entity Unicaja, among many other positions, which gives an idea of the high degree of professional involvement that has.
This businessman from Malaga has turned his company into a benchmark in the international meat sector. Famadesa was founded in 1970 in a small slaughterhouse in Snowdrops and today it is a global business group.
The first question is a must. What does it mean to you to be chosen as Entrepreneur of the Year in the first edition of the Banco Sabadell Company of the Year Awards?
Without a doubt, I am very excited. The fact that they continue to value my professional career after so many years of struggle, more than fifty, is a great joy and satisfaction.
Record turnover (351 million, 22% more than in 2022 and a new record in the increase in exports), and the company’s new production plant with more than 20,000 square meters is about to start operating. What is the key to Famadesa’s success?
The secret is none other than spending more than 50 years devoting many hours to the company, from early in the morning until late at night, with practically no holidays, and above all, loving what you do and coming to work every day with even more enthusiasm, if possible, than the day before. There is no better secret than that.
The secret is none other than spending more than 50 years devoting many hours to the company, from early in the morning until late at night, with practically no holidays, and above all, loving what you do and coming to work every day with even more enthusiasm, if possible, than the day before. There is no better secret than that.
Yes. It will come into operation at the end of June or beginning of July and in it we present an expansion of spaces of more than 20,000 square meters to the existing ones and a technological improvement in R&D&i. Its new cutting room will allow an improvement in the optimization of the production process, as well as better control of performance through ID points. It also has other improvements, such as the new oreo and stabilization chamber with capacity for 10,000 carcasses, as well as new loading docks and a new dynamic box warehouse, with capacity for 3,600 boxes/hour. We are very proud that this has been done in Malaga and Andalusia.
For years Famadesa has been immersed in a process to optimize its production process and performance thanks to the use of technology. How has this process been or is it going? What improvements are they incorporating?
We are now completing a process in which we have been immersed for some years now and in which we have had to literally change our way of working. In this new stage we need more specialized workers and to do so, we have had to train all our staff in these new tasks, whom I thank for their good disposition.
What do you think are the main challenges facing the Andalusian meat sector?
I’m going to tell you just one and we have to solve it once and for all: we do not have enough pigs in Andalusia to supply the meat industries in our community. This causes us to be deficient in our main raw material and we have to bring pigs from outside Andalusia: from Segovia, Toledo, Castellón, Murcia and even from Portugal. Andalusia is the largest community in Spain and yet it is the fourth in pig production after Catalonia, Aragon and Castilla-León. It is clear that the production of pigs in our land must be encouraged.
You have been critical of the increasingly demanding environmental regulations that have to be applied in the meat sector and that, according to you, “can leave many people behind.”
Yes, I have been very critical for years and time has proven me right because Europe is reversing some of the regulations with which it legislated the sector, eliminating them or radically changing them because their application makes the final product very expensive for the consumer.
To face the day-to-day challenges of a company of the caliber of Famadesa, what do you think good leadership should be like?
I understand leadership in only one way: for more than half a century I have been the first to arrive to work and the last to leave, now that I am in my sixties. The people, the management staff and the employee see it and there is no need to tell them anything else and they take the same path as you. And this way of doing things so far is working for us because every year we open new markets, we grow in all the company’s indicators and it makes us increase our turnover. There is no more secret than this.
Sustainability and respect for the environment are part of the company’s daily operations.
Yes, for a long time now. I’ll give you two examples: we have a water treatment plant that recycles almost half of the water we use and solar panels provide us with more than 20% of the electricity we need. We invest a lot in sustainable practices and we feel pioneering and very proud of doing so.
Source: www.elperiodico.com
