He began by warning: «I'm here because they invited me and not because I'm the shadow president of Jerónimo Martins». The tone was set for a few minutes of conversation outspoken Alexandre Soares dos Santos, who is no longer the head of the Jerónimo Martins Group, after having past the folder in December to his son Pedro Soares dos Santos, but who remains truculent and frontal as ever.
His target, in front of an audience full of Group leaders, mayors, suppliers, other business partners, entrepreneurs, were journalists… and there were many there, this Thursday, for the inauguration of the Jerónimo Martins Group Distribution Center in Algoz, Algarve, most of them came on purpose from Lisbon on a bus at the company's invitation.
Ensuring that he is talking "like a citizen", Alexandre Soares dos Santos, 80, said he was fed up with what "some journalists write about us", namely that they are a "crushing machine that kills suppliers" and recalled that the Group invested “1,5 billion euros in the last 10 years in Portugal and created 10 thousand jobs", while in the last five years, with the country already in crisis, "invested 540 million euros and created 1200 jobs. We're not killing anyone here!»
Then, he added, "we have been helping agriculture in an extraordinary way." And he gave examples: «there are people creating the call Angus Beef stimulated by Jerónimo Martins». And "how many agricultural companies" have improved their production because they are the Group's suppliers, he said.
The Jerónimo Martins Group, «like other Portuguese companies, such as Sonae, contributed to lower consumer prices, to lower inflation in Portugal, to improved product quality. This is a good thing to say!”, guaranteed Alexandre Soares dos Santos.
«Do we need profits? We need! If I don't make a profit, I can't invest! And I'm talking about Portugal, I'm not talking about Poland or Colombia», where the Group also has important businesses in the distribution and retail sector. And where, apparently, Soares dos Santos feels more welcome than in Portugal.
What the patriarch of the Group does not like, as he has said several times and repeated today, is that distribution companies are said to destroy the country's economic fabric. “Let's put an end to this notion that those who invest in distribution provide bad services. We only provide good services, which is why we are market leaders in Poland, which is a country with 45 million inhabitants, where we have 2300 stores».
The businessman also criticized the emphasis that, in his opinion, is given to companies that are no longer Portuguese and went to Brazil, such as PT or Cimpor, to the detriment of his own. «National companies like us, like Sonae, that stay here, are frowned upon. My family will never sell Jerónimo Martins, this has belonged to my family for 100 years. We are not avoiding taxes here, as the newspapers and television so often say. We don't evade taxes, we abide by the law, we have a strict code of conduct that comes from my grandfather. We invest seven million euros a year in the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation!».
For all that, stressed Alexandre Soares dos Santos, always pointing the batteries to journalists, who were even there doing their work but at the invitation of the Group itself, “I would like you journalists to think a little more maturely about the frivolities that so often write ».
Because, he lamented, "I am much better received in Colombia, where I hardly know anyone, than in Portugal." «We are Portuguese, we love our country. It's also hard that, after so much work, of creating companies of so much category, we don't see this work in favor of the country recognized».
Finally, the patriarch of the Jerónimo Martins Group, said he is "very proud that we contribute to the development of Portugal" and warned: "in a few weeks, you will see what we have to announce in Portugal". In other words, more investments are in the pipeline, and probably in areas different from the current one. But that's a matter for another article.
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