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Montesano's Meat MagnateForty years ago, people thought Martin García Garzón was barmy when he started to set up his meat processing plant in Tenerife; nowadays and with a roaring success on his hands, they can only admire his foresight and business acumen.
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 | | Martín García Garzón, managing director of Montesano | | © Island Connections |
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by Sheila Collis - 21.10.2004 - Martin was born in Salamanca in 1937, an area synonymous with excellent meat products, and in fact it was in this sector that his family worked, owning and running a small business there. He studied business at Salamanca University but, “Salamanca is a lovely place to visit a marvellous architectural jewel, however economically it’s stood still. It is an exporter of people - anyone born and raised there has to go out of the province to look for work.” He worked with the family for a while and then as press liaison with a bank when, after a chance contact in Madrid with a Canarian businessman, he came over to see the islands and to study the possibility of opening a meat processing plant here. He reminisces, “I was hooked by the Islands.”
He got together a group of associates and set up in la Esperanza. “To start with, we rented a couple of adjoining premises and adapted them - we ended up with half a street.” In the beginning he not only had to show the locals how to prepare the meat, he had to show them how to eat it! There was little or no tradition of ‘embutidos’ in those days in the Canaries. The dictionary translates it as sausage, but it’s so much more - a whole range of meat products which are cured, smoked, mixed, chopped or minced together, flavoured with garlic or a wide variety of spices. “At the most they imported a bit of Bologna salami or tinned ham from Denmark”. And then traditionally this type of production was associated with regions with hard winters. “Where was the snow and the cold to manufacture? We broke all the moulds and it was hard at first. In 1965, giving a knife to people whose only work experience was in the fields and showing them how to butcher meat, it was tremendous.”
After various tooing and froing with associates, in 1978 Martín ended up as the majority shareholder and shortly afterwards in the face in increasing demand, building on the present site was started. They moved to the new factory in 1982 and the premises have since been increased to a factory area of 18,000 square metres employing more than 200 people. Some of the original staff are still with them as are their children. “In 1960 you could manufacture wherever, these days there has to be guaranteed conditions.” The plant has higher hygienic standards than many an operating theatre. They have a filleting annex for slicing and packaging where the air continually circulating, filtered and chilled to between eight and ten degrees before it enters the work area and the rooms are kept at a slight positive pressure, so that when a door is opened the air flow is outwards. Martín said proudly, “it’s one of the most complete establishments in the whole of Spain because we handle a lot of different products and we aim to be the best in each.” As proof of the excellence of their products they have just been given the international System Quality award, ISO 9001:2000.
The new factory has state of the art curing rooms for the popular cured ham (jamón Serrano) and they can process up to 200,000 hams a year in the 3,000 square metres of curing and storage space. After salting, computer controlled rooms take the hams through from Winter to Autumn to complete the curing process and they are then transferred to a storage bodega where the aging process continues for up to 18 months in the case of the Montesano Bodega ham. To keep the process as natural as possible, delicate sensors monitor the internal and external temperatures and humidity, opening the windows and switching off the machines when the two coincide.
Just over a year ago, they made the vast leap into the ‘Iberico’ market, with the purchase of their Extremadura farm and slaughterhouse, with capacity for 100,000 to 120,000 beasts. Iberian hams and embutidos are the crème de la crème of the market, with strict quality control to protect the brand. The pedigree pigs (pata negra) are bred in the open fields and a large part of their diet is acorns, resulting in a subtle special flavour in all the end products, very much appreciated by gourmets. Already exporting to Chile from Tenerife, the Extremadura plant has opened up the export market for Montesano in Mexico and Japan but Martín is not satisfied. He claims there is too much conflicting bureaucracy for exporters and one of the proposals that the confederation of meat businesses (CONFECARNE – of which he’s co-president) has made, is the formation of a meat exportation office to streamline the processes and cut down on the red tape.
Something else that the sector is calling for are more studies to show the good points of meat, “because all you hear are the negative things, the cholesterol, makes you fat etc”. The organisation was horrified to find a didactic children’s book on sale showing a child going round a supermarket with his dog, and basically saying don’t eat sausages, chorizo etc. because they’re bad for you. “We need to counteract this image and publicise the recognised benefits of meat. I’m not saying that you should live on a diet of jamón Serrano, but you shouldn’t live on just artichokes either. A healthy diet is a varied diet. There are studies that have been carried out be a group of doctors in Badajoz comparing the benefits of oily fish and jamón Serrano in the diet, showing that it is equally as good in combating cholesterol problems. People should know that. There are also other food studies showing that pork is beneficial in a comprehensive diet.”
They continue to bring new products to the market, one of the most recent being the delicious gammon style Mencey ham which is 100 per cent natural, made without additives and low in phosphates and salt. Future plans include more new products. “The market is evolving very quickly and we have to change too so we are constantly looking at new products. The speed of the diffusion of information is incredible and there are social changes and changes in customs, people want things easier and faster. The Spanish have always had a tradition of good food. Pleasure for us is a good meal on the table, gastronomic delicacies and a good restaurant. As far as the Americans go, we know that doesn’t exist with rare exceptions. Will we go that way, or achieve a mixture of neither here nor there? We don’t know, so we have to have the antennae up permanently to see which way the winds blowing and stay ahead of it”. But however fast things change in consumer customs, Martín believes that, “a quality product will last over time. A jamón pata negra for example is for ever”.
Not fulfilled with just his Embutidos de Tenerife empire which includes companies in Tenerife and Las Palmas, he also has a distribution chain, the Extremadura plant, a participation in a hamburger factory in Barcelona, a refrigeration company in Las Palmas and Santa Cruz handling storage for frozen produce (mainly fish) and a logistics company. “I’m a restless person. I travel about and people set out propositions before me.” Is that restlessness the secret of his phenomenal success? Martín set out his own recipe claiming that you should, “believe in what you do, persevere, dedicate all the time necessary to it, work honestly, rigorously and seriously and above all reinvest constantly.”
Although he claims to have taken a back seat in Montesano recently, handing the reins over to his twin sons and daughter, he hasn’t any plans for retirement. “I’m old enough to retire now, but the train’s rolling and I can’t get off. The thing is, if it stopped in a station, I’d still continue, maybe on a slower line, but I’d continue. My wife and I have been married 34 years and she wants me to retire, but she doesn’t know what to do with me. As long as my body lets me I’ll continue.”
At a very young 67, Martín is a fine advertisement for the healthiness of his own products. If you haven’t yet tried one of these superb locally produced gourmets delights yet, they are stocked in all the best supermarkets in the delicatessen area. And remember, support the local company and look for the Montesano name.
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