business

The Damm Group, manufacturer of the popular Catalan beer brand Estrella, had a turnover of 421 million in the first six months of 2012, a 8.5% increase in relation to the same period last year. The company is not making any predictions for the second half of the year due to the uncertainty over the VAT increase but has stated that sales over the past weeks have “evolved satisfactorily”.

The expansion to Brazil is part of the company’s international development plan, which aims to start operations in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. The company hopes to replicate its successful European business model overseas and has started with the opening of new offices in São Paulo. Galenicum, a developer of generic medicines, is based in Barcelona and produced a turnover of €77 million in 2011, a 542% increase in just two years.

The search engine giant adds thirteen languages to its speech recognition system, also including Basque and Galician. From this Friday, it will be possible to use the service on phones with the Android operating system to search in Catalan. With this addition, Google’s speech recognition software now supports 42 languages.

With 5.13 billion in foreign sales in June, Catalan exports have grown by 6.6% over the same period in 2011. Amongst the Autonomous Communities, Catalonia ranks first for its export economy, in the first six months of this year Catalan companies sold up to €29.1 billion abroad. The increase in foreign exports and the fall in imports have reduced the trade deficit by 31% in the first six months of this year.

The Catalan bank, which leads the Spanish market, increases its share in the Portuguese Investment Bank by 7 percentage points increasing its stake from 39.5% to 46.22%. CaixaBank purchased just over 251 million shares in the capital increase offered by the Portuguese financial entity, at a cost of €125 million. Caixabank had already said it would extend its share in the BPI.

The Director General of the Catalan fashion retailer, Enric Casi, had already warned that the MANGO's profits in 2011 would be lower than usual due to its extensive investments and expansions abroad. In 2012, the company expects a profit of €200 million due to the investments and has already seen positive results for the first months of this year. The successful multinational was founded in Barcelona in 1984 and has over 2,400 outlets in 107 countries and over 11,000 employees.

The Catalan highway, transport and telecommunication management company Abertis has accepted Tagus’ takeover of its shares in Brisa, which represent 15.02% of the Portuguese highway company. Abertis now wants to focus on projects that represent added value for its global strategic action. In addition, two days ago, Abertis’ board ratified last April’s agreement to acquire 9 highway concessions from OHL in Brazil. With this operation, the Catalan company becomes the largest group in the world managing highways, with more than 7,000 kilometres worldwide.

The Catalan airline Vueling, based in Barcelona, increased by 16.2% the number of flights compared to a year ago. The airline has defied the Spanish market trend with an increase in its global volume of passengers by nearly 19%. Vueling attributes this increase to a growth in the company’s activity and a rise in its flight occupation rate, which reached 75.5%.

The Catalan pharmaceutical company Grifols, the third world leader in the production of blood plasma based technologies, has seen its turnover increase by 15% in the first half of 2012 to €1.32 billion. Its net profit for the first half of 2012 was €133.5 million, seven times that of the previous year. The company’s success is attributed to its wide geographical consumer base and the recent purchase of US based Talecris Plasma Resources.

34% of the bottles have been sold in the Girona region, but Barcelona is still “the pending market”. Sales have been 5% higher in comparison to 2010 and 18% higher compared to the last four years. The president of the wine designation, Josep Blanch, said that this “achievement” proves that Empordà DO has consolidated because since its beginnings, it has been growing year by year in a “consistent” way.

Catalan companies sold more goods and services abroad than they did to the rest of Spain in 2011. 52.9% of all Catalonia’s external sales were made abroad, while 47.1% were made to the rest of Spain. In addition, it is the first time that Catalonia has registered a positive balance of trade.

The Catalan company has promoted its presence in BRIC countries and has achieved two consecutive years of profits therefore recovering from the effects of the explosion of the property bubble

From October 15th to 17th, Barcelona will host Seafood, the largest show in southern Europe in the field of marketing fishing products. In its first edition, the show will feature nearly 300 exhibitors, 40% of them international, as well as many representatives of exhibiting companies and processors of seafood.

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, travelled to Massachusetts and New York to promote Catalan businesses and present Catalonia as one of the main biotechnological clusters and tourist destinations in Europe. In addition, Ernst & Young presented their report on life sciences companies and research centres in Catalonia, which indicates that almost 30% of this sector’s turnover in Spain comes from Catalan businesses.

The leading company in Spain for online entertainment sales, born in 2000, has not stopped expanding over the past twelve years. What began as an idea among four friends to get the theaters filled, today is a leading Internet company with more than 350 employees, a presence in six countries and a turnover of €210 million a year.