A call to the telephone number 900 500 103 –Mercadona’s free customer service line (currently 800 500 220)–, was the origin of the transformation of Productes del Moianès, a company founded in 1987 and specialized in the manufacture of derivatives of the milk. “In 2019 we wanted to send some samples of our products to Mercadona, and we called their 900 telephone number to find out how we had to do it,” explains Alberto Díez Quintanilla, general director of Productes del Moianès. “Shortly after sending them, Mercadona called us to tell us that they liked our products and that they wanted to visit us.”
That visit was the beginning of a close collaboration that has allowed the company Productes del Moianès, located in Moià, to be one of the more than 240 Catalan or Catalonia-based suppliers that Mercadona works with, a company that is committed to the development of fabric local productive. Proof of this promotion of local products is that the supermarket chain buys fruit (mainly pears, apples, peaches and nectarines) from various companies from Lleida and Girona –such as Nufri, Girona Fruits, Fructícola Empordà, Grup Cooperatiu Fruits de Ponent and Sat Segrià-Garrigues, among others–, while the figs it sells come from the fields of Eco Figs Fruits and Vimofigs in the Lleida region.
Other suppliers in the territory are Casa Tarradellas, which makes Hacendado pizzas, fuet and pates; Mediterranean Costa Brava Foods, Noel and La Selva, which serve the sausages marketed by the supermarket chain, while a good part of the veal comes from the Ivars Cooperative (Ivars d’Urgell, Lleida) and much of the fresh fish from the Catalan coastline that is sold in Mercadona fishmongers has left the Catalan markets.
This commitment by local companies can also be found in other areas, such as personal hygiene, where Laboratoris Maverick, from Ulldecona (Tarragona), is in charge of providing bath gels, shampoos and deodorants; You Cosmetics in Gavà (Barcelona) and Wecolors in Vilassar de Dalt (Barcelona) supply cosmetic products, and with regard to cleaning and home care, the company Saplex, based in Canovelles (Barcelona), serves rolls of plastic bags. garbage, among other suppliers throughout the territory.
In the case of Productes del Moianès, after a year of testing, working closely with Mercadona’s innovation and quality teams, seeking to make a healthy product with the best flavor, quality and price possible, the company specialized in manufacture of two varieties of liquid kefir: the natural one skimmed from cow’s milk and the vegetable one with coconut.
“If we wanted to be the best in a specialty, what Mercadona calls ‘specialist suppliers’, we needed to concentrate efforts and resources. Before, we were a multi-product workshop and now we have two packaging lines and we are more efficient”, points out Alberto Díez Quintanilla while showing the factory and detailing the process of making kefir, a fermented drink that has a beneficial effect on the intestinal microbiota.
To carry out this change, the company made an investment of two million euros and multiplied by three the number of workers, going from ten to thirty people, which has had a significant impact on the territory. “The collaboration with Mercadona has had a positive impact among the people of the area and has benefited other local companies, from which we buy raw materials or provide work. For example, the milk comes from the Cooperativa Plana de Vic, and the two packaging machines have been manufactured by a company from our estate”.
And it is that, one of the things that unites Mercadona and Productes del Moianès is the will to bet on the territory. A sample is found in the milk: all the milk sold by the supermarket chain in Catalonia is of Catalan origin.
In the last two years, the Moià factory has increased its fermentation capacity from 1,500 liters to 20,000 liters, and has gone from having a capacity to pack 1,200 units/hour to a capacity of 12,000.
It has also expanded the changing rooms, the warehouse, it has made a loading dock prepared so as not to break the cold chain… “An important transformation for the company that would not have been possible without the support of Mercadona”, explains the general director of Moianès products. “The key has been that we have had the possibility to grow and serve the stores progressively. If we hadn’t done it that way, it would have been impossible!” he remarks.
The drinkable natural skimmed cow’s milk kefir and coconut milk began to be on the chain’s shelves in May 2021, and for a year Productes del Moianès was expanding the number of establishments in which it served, Until July 2022, it already supplied the 1,650 stores that Mercadona has throughout Spain.
The increase in sales has meant that the company went from billing one million euros in 2021 to five million in 2022. “For us, Mercadona is more of a partner than a customer,” explains Díez Quintanilla, who concludes: “Working Working with the supermarket chain has been a great challenge: being able to produce 50,000 units a day with excellent quality, and with the aim of continuous improvement”, concludes the general manager of Productes del Moianès.
The commitment to local production is part of Mercadona’s strategy to minimize its environmental impact. In addition, the company has incorporated improvements into its processes that have allowed it, in two years – from 2020 to 2022 – to reduce the carbon footprint of Catalonia by more than 15,900 tons of CO2 emissions.
Thanks to these advances, it has managed to minimize both direct emissions of greenhouse gases in supermarkets and in the logistics network, as well as indirect emissions, derived from the purchase and consumption of electricity in its network of stores, logistics network and offices.
