Congalsa is a Galician flagship of the frozen and deep-frozen fish sector. The company is also immersed in a process of commitment to innovation and digital transformation towards Industry 4.0. Its general manager, Luis Miguel Simarro, tells us how to face this transition from a traditional sector to continue positioning Galicia at the forefront.

How does Congalsa manage to be competitive in a global market?

I believe the key is that we have managed to be flexible in an industry environment that changes on an almost weekly basis. Flexibility, which used to be important for all companies, has now become essential in the times we live in.

Matching the capacity of our processes with our growth objectives, placing customer satisfaction at the forefront, was also a very important aspect in optimising our competitiveness.

At the same time, our increased competitiveness was also linked to aspects that we consider fundamental such as the sustainable development strategy that we are promoting with a view to actively protecting marine resources. In addition, implementing a continuous improvement model in our facilities and involving all our human capital in the project helped us enormously.

Additionally, we frequently launch new products that seek to connect with different market niches and segments and, at the same time, we are committed to bulking up marketing, product communication and corporate communication strategies.

We grew inorganically and in 2020, we acquired a company in Portugal called Sulpasteis, specialised in the production of pre-cooked products, the fish base of typical Portuguese products such as codfish cakes, shrimp delicacies, rissois or pataniscas, among others. This operation allowed us to expand our product portfolio and to achieve an annual turnover of over 100 million euros.

The company made the leap to a 4.0 production model by taking advantage of the possibilities offered by big data and artificial intelligence. What were the actions undertaken and what are the results obtained?

Indeed, we are currently starting to reap the benefits and validate the pilots we have been working on since 2019 in the Congals4.0 project, jointly promoted with Gradiant and with the support of the Galician Innovation Agency. This is a project that was developed using EU FEDER funds, in which we are implementing a smart factory model, which allows us to advance in the digital transformation of our factory and strengthen our leadership position in the Galician food industry.

The starting point of the smart factory is a globally connected factory, integrating and taking into account production processes, but also management processes, so that the first result obtained is a better management of resources and a faster response, having real data from the entire value chain.

The technology that we consider to be the most important for Industry 4.0 and even for Industry 5.0 is artificial intelligence. This not only improves productivity ratios but also boosts the development of the strategy by optimising our data analytics, improving our knowledge of our customers and our own products and even the quality of life of our employees, enhancing certain crucial skills in the company's innovation system, such as creativity and intuition.

We have no doubt that digitisation is vital and constitutes a very important lever for growth. Technology is changing the way we produce and consume. Therefore, we believe that the Congals4.0 project will help us achieve this growth.

How does a company in the traditional sector tackle the commitment to innovation in order to continue positioning Galicia at the forefront?

This has always been a common practice at Congalsa, even when R&D&I wasn’t being talked about. We already had that culture in place. Today, innovation is a cornerstone of our growth.

We have our own innovation department that constantly strengthens our ideas to be a more competitive company that offers innovative solutions in the difficult food market. This is a way not only to position ourselves as a benchmark in the field of innovation, but also to promote this premise in the Galician food sector so that our autonomous community is at the forefront.

In this sense, we promote the constant launching of new food products to the market under the SCCP (HSCP) premises that define our company's products: Healthy, Sustainable, Convenient and Pleasurable.

You are the first Spanish food company to achieve the prestigious EFQM 600 seal. What does this distinction entail?

A few months ago, we became the first company in the Spanish food sector to be awarded the EFQM 600 seal, a recognition granted in Spain by the Club de Excelencia. This prestigious seal distinguishes, according to international standards, organisations that seek to improve management excellence.

Achieving this proves that Congalsa is a company with different strengths. These include our operation and governance and the culture of creativity and innovation in the company.

Applying technology and innovation to add value is also a sign of Congalsa's identity, one that helped us obtain this seal. The EFQM 600 also highlights the company's operational efficiency and proves that our strategic results are clearly on a positive trend.

Finally, the seal also recognises that the company's various stakeholders have an established, highly favourable perception of us.

What does the company's commitment to sustainability and the environment look like?

At Congalsa we believe in sustainability from a triple perspective: economic, environmental and social. And we are working along these lines to be more sustainable.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of everything that pertains to the issue of sustainability. At Congalsa, we are firmly committed to the development of programmes and policies that allow the responsible control of fishery resources.

We believe in the need to work actively on all the steps of the food chain and, for this reason, we have been collaborating for several years with SFP, an international organisation that helps us improve the sustainability of the main species we consume to make our products.

Through this organisation, we can influence, together with other companies in the sector, the fishing policies of the countries of origin so that they become more oriented towards improving sustainability.

Internally, we are also committed to the use of materials that allow us to benefit from the impact of renewable energies. To cite just one fairly recent example, we decided to install solar panels throughout our facilities. We also design strategies to optimise our water consumption, among other measures.