Lusiaves Group awarded by the Minister of Agriculture with the Medal of Agricultural Merit

It was with great appreciation, respect and emotion that the President of Lusiaves Group received the Medal of Agricultural Merit from Mr. Luís Capoulas Santos, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development. The event took place on the 15th of December, during the announcement of the expansion of Racentro.

Directly addressing Avelino Gaspar, the Minister Capoulas dos Santos said “Mister Commander, I would like to mention it is a pleasure for me and for this Government to be able to rely on great citizens such as yourself. As a result of the work being developed by You, Mister Commander, and the Group under your management, I would like to award You the Medal of Agricultural Merit, which is the highest honour awarded by the Ministry of Agriculture for acknowledgement of personalities and organisations with relevant role in society.”

During his speech, Mr. Capoulas Santos also pointed out that this is an award granted for the work being developed by the Group in this sector, in a “particularly committed and dedicated” way and emphasised the act of solidarity of Lusiaves Group “seeking to help the areas devastated by tragedy this summer”.

During his presentation on the Lusiaves Group, the Minister highlighted the numerous awards held by the Group, as well as their corporate values of Ethics, Innovation and Quality.

This Friday, Lusiaves Groups announced the investment of 60 million euros in the construction of poultry production units in the municipalities of Pedrógão Grande, Castanheira de Pêra and Figueiró dos Vinhos.

During a meeting with journalists, in the City Council of Pedrógão Grande, where two weeks ago there was a fire which resulted in the death of 64 people, Mr. Avelino Gaspar, President of the Group, stated that 20 million euros will be invested in each of these municipalities of the district of Leiria. 

Each of these future units of Lusiaves will cover an area of 100 hectares and will allow to locally create 100 new jobs, totalling three hundred jobs within those three municipalities.

Mr. Avelino Gaspar said that, in a first stage, these units will have as main activity the production of poultry for the group, which has its head office in Leiria.

More than two thousand firefighters were engaged in fighting the fire, which consumed 53 thousand hectares of forest, equivalent to around 75 thousand football pitches.

The area destroyed by these fires – which started in Pedrógão Grande, in the district of Leiria, and in Góis, in the district of Coimbra – corresponds to roughly a third of the total burnt area in Portugal in 2016, amounting to 154,944 hectares, according to the Annual Report of Internal Safety disclosed by the Government in March.

The fire, which started in Pedrógão Grande, resulted in the death of at least 47 people in the secondary road 236-1, between Castanheira de Pêra and Figueiró dos Vinhos, municipalities which were also affected by the fire.