Segura (AVIA): “We have no choice but to ask Europe to regulate the market with China”

The businessman Paco Segura, president of the industrial company Grupo Segura and of the automotive and mobility cluster of the Valencian Community, AVIA, explained yesterday how Chinese competition and the difficult adaptation of the client to the electrification of the vehicle are two of the big problems current in the automotive sector.

Segura explained that China is the one that is doing the most damage to the sector. “We adapt to the circumstances, but we have no choice but to ask Europe to regulate the market with China, because it works even illegally and its products then cross the borders with total impunity,” explained the businessman, for whom “we should all have the same rules.”

Segura also explained that Ford’s supplier park in Valencia is “quite damaged” and explained that to tackle new projects and to train staff, the collaboration of public institutions is needed. “It is a hard time, we need help from the Government and the regional Administration,” said the businessman.

His description of the context occurred yesterday during a panel on industrial challenges held at the VII Paco Pons Conference, organized by the Valencian Association of Entrepreneurs (AVE) and the Association for the Progress of Management (APD). Only a few hours later, the Ford Valencia works council communicated the company’s new intentions to meet with the workforce to address the negotiation of a new ERE, just over a year after the last one and in the middle of an ERTE process due to, among others, the drop in the workload in the factory.

All factors that also affect the supplier companies of the tractor firm, which this week announced its resignation from the Electric Vehicle Perte after having decided that the next product to leave Valencia will be a hybrid, and not an electric one as expected.

Segura’s reflection was produced during the round table on industrial challenges in which he participated together with Soledad Berbegal, adviser and director of Corporate Reputation of ACTIU; María Cinta Segarra, administrator of Grupo Corporación Juan Segarra, and Santiago Vallejo, president of Pinturas Isaval, moderated by Sandra Deltell, managing partner of PwC Valencian Community and Region of Murcia.

The speakers, representatives of exporting companies, explained their difficulties in a complex year marked by the geopolitical context. Thus, the administrator of Grupo Corporación Juan Segarra explained how Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was a problem because “Russia is the breadbasket of Europe.” He also pointed out that the increase in energy costs combined with that of raw materials, “now we need 45% of our resources to pay the same as we were paying before.”

The managers also addressed the challenges that their companies must overcome as they are family businesses, which involve consolidating the values ​​that drove them and infecting future generations, they noted. In this sense, Berbegal pointed out that “as entrepreneurs we must tell what we do much better, share our culture, our values ​​and projects, because it will help us to be better known, and we will be perceived as closer and more attractive, because what is not known It cannot be valued or loved.”

His company, Actiu, is one of the industrial firms with the greatest projection in Alicante that opted for the territory without giving up growth, a maxim that was also discussed yesterday at the event. Regarding this idea, Rafael Navarro, co-founding partner of Innsomnia, highlighted that the Valencian autonomy is “very attractive to attract technology companies, varied in sectors where digital technologies must be applied”, but it lacks “a strategy clear long-term, international outlook and support for local initiatives.” Navarro moderated the first table, in which it was analyzed whether the Valencian Community is a territory that promotes technological companies.

As an example, Carlos Ledó, founder and CEO of Veganic Nature, participated; Javier Mira, president and CEO of FacePhi, and Héctor Viguer, partner and director of operations at Brainstorm Multimedia, who explained their success stories and advocated for a more united business sector that collaborates more, and where financing flows more and better.

Also participating in the meeting were Agnès Noguera, CEO of Libertas 7, and Laura González-Molero, president of APD, who began a dialogue on corporate governance to ensure “the viability and sustainability of any Organization,” according to the latter.

Finally, Juan Carlos Cubeiro, management expert, offered the final presentation on this day that remembers Paco Pons, a businessman who “dedicated his professional and business career to ensuring that our society was more committed to its development and, with it, more solid and strong”, as pointed out by the president of AVE, Vicente Boluda.