"Since the beginning we have believed the future is in birds"

“We believed from the beginning that the future is in birds”, says Grupo Valouro administrator, António José dos Santos. For this reason, the company is investing in a new production unit for breeding chickens for 500,000 chicks per week, in Navalmoral de la Mata, next to the nuclear power plant in Almaraz, Spain, in partnership with a Spanish company.

The new production unit, an investment of 22 million euros, will be fully operational in 2018 and is expected to employ around 60 people.

The Valouro Group, another presence in the 6th edition of AgroGlobal - Fair of Great Cultures that takes place from September 5th to 7th, 2018, in Valada do Ribatejo, has a vertical business model, which starts in agriculture and ends in the dish, from the production of cereals, to their transformation into rations, multiplication of chicks, slaughterhouses, transformation and sale of chicken meat, fresh and cooked.

Leader in the production and sale of eggs

It is one of the main agro-industrial groups in Portugal and leads the business of producing and selling hatching eggs in Europe.

Founded by António José dos Santos and José António dos Santos, twin brothers, the Valouro Group has thrived in recent decades thanks to the strategic vision of its owners.

“Since I know myself, the chicken market has always grown, we believed from the beginning that the future is in birds, because more and more people prefer white to red meats”, says António José dos Santos, responsible for the agricultural component and feed industries in the Valouro Group, to AgroGlobal's communication.

But he adds that it is, however, “an activity where you can only get margin through large volumes”.

Growing chicken market

In 2017, the national chicken meat market continued to grow. According to an INE report, dated December 2017, “for poultry, an increase in volume is expected (+ 4.9%), to which the increase in chicken production contributes, as a result of the higher production of breeding poultry”.

In cereal production

In the agricultural area, the Valouro Group produces around 1,100 hectares of cereals (900 hectares of corn, more than 16,000 tons in 2017), on its own properties, located between Alvalade do Sado and Aljustrel, where it also has a chicken production unit.

“All the chickens we produce in the Alentejo consume our corn”, but own production barely reaches a month of half the needs of the Group's industries, which spend an average of 13,000 tons of corn per month.

António José dos Santos also tells AgroGlobal's communication that the corn produced in Portugal has good quality, so from September to mid-December it buys an average of 70 thousand tons of corn in the national market, avoiding importing the cereal from abroad.

However, he acknowledges that “corn imported from Brazil has more protein than ours and, lately, good corn has also been coming from Bulgaria and Romania”. The businessman believes that the national area of corn will not increase in the future, not least because most of the land where corn was grown now has olive groves, and says that the only way for corn products to survive will be “further improving the productivity of culture, because water and electricity are expensive ”and creating synergies with livestock production.

Source: http://agriculturaemar.com/grupo-valouro-acreditamos-desde-o-inicio-que-o-futuro-esta-nas-aves/