Focused mainly on the architectural market, but with a wide range of solutions to meet the demands of the furniture, decorative, automotive and home appliance industries, VITROCHAVES has not only grown in area, says the company's head. "We are market leaders at a national level, where our most direct competitor sells five million euros less than we do," says Joaquim Chaves, who is proud to lead one of the region's main employers. "In Chaves alone, a city of around 20,000 inhabitants, we have around 160 employees and we are the largest private employer in the municipality and the sixth largest in the district." According to the CEO, in global terms, the VITROCHAVES group employs around 200 people and, since August last year, has also included a company dedicated to glass installation.
Committed to "continuing to contribute to the development of Portugal and the region of Trás-os-Montes", where it is based, VITROCHAVES doesn't view its location in the interior of the country as an obstacle, but rather as a starting point. "Even because we're close to the border, we've always bet on the foreign market," says Joaquim Chaves, pointing to the different paths that lead to the internationalization of the business. "In 2022, direct exports accounted for 16%, but indirectly we export more than 50% of our production to 26 countries," he says. This focus on exports leads the company to consider itself "closer to Europe than to the rest of the country", although it doesn't prevent it from accounting for the "costs of being inland" which, in Joaquim Chaves' opinion, "are still expensive".
"In certain cases, it's cheaper for us to put a product in Franca than in the Algarve," admits the CEO, who admits that it's "easier to get to Madrid than to Lisbon". "For Madrid, we have practically no highway costs, while for Lisbon, a truck pays around 200 euros in tolls alone," he laments.
Having earned the distinctions of PME Líder and PME Excelência "for several years", in the 1990s VITROCHAVES was the first Portuguese company to have its product certified in the field of insulating glass. This is a legacy of innovation that the company intends to continue, looking to the future, says Joaquim Chaves. "We've been investing in automation, particularly in Chaves, where we've already invested 9 million euros to build a 100% automatic production unit," said the manager, who also praised Altice's "important contribution" to the modernization of VITROCHAVES, as a communications partner.