Mário de Sousa is the CEO of the Portocargo company, which does international freight transport and has 39 employees and a turnover of 52 million euros. In an interview with Jornal TRIBUNA DE MACAU, granted in Portugal, he points out that he has been working with the Macau market since 1991 and that he has “succeeded in quality products” and “top of the range

SUSANA MARTINHO*

-What is the role of the Portocargo company?

-We are a forwarding agent, a company that designs, organizes, and executes logistics solutions that enable a commodity, a product, a good, to get from any place in the world to the farthest and most imaginable place possible. When it comes to the export market, the goal until recently was to get rid of barriers, so that the transaction could be free from one country to another. But, I think we all realize that from globalization we are moving to the fragmentation of countries and the creation of blocs…

-How long have you been working with Macau?

-Since 1991. I have a great affection for it being a territory administered by the Portuguese. There was a phase after the handover when the People’s Republic of China granted the licenses for the new casinos and resorts and Macau is transformed and awakened.

-And it finally becomes a link between Portugal and China?

-Macau awakens and becomes an interesting market for us and especially for products originating from Portugal. It’s interesting to see how such a small Portuguese community in Macau that stayed there, and others who later entered, managed to transform the territory into an area that showed the People’s Republic of China the importance of our food and our products, namely wine, olive oil, cheese, sausages… we even transported water from Portugal to Macau recently. -Water? Why? -Because Portuguese water sells well in Macau, bottled, of course, by Luso and other bottlers around here. So, we transport containers and containers of water, and also milk. There is a significant consumption of Portuguese products, we are talking about several hundred in total, perhaps even reaching over a thousand containers per year of goods of products that are one hundred percent Portuguese.

-How much does the Asian market represent for your company? And Macau?

-The Asian market represents, perhaps, 40-45% of our business volume. Macau is important. It opens doors for several products and the Chinese who go to Macau see, use or eat the Portuguese products. They get hooked on them there and then come here to get them directly, and many times they don’t even need to go through Macau, because the territory is so extensive that they go directly to the big centers and to a panoply of provinces with which we have transactions. Macau is, for us, our shop window in China.

-How would you define the relations within this trade and export area between Portugal and Macau? Have we gone beyond the period of tension and mistrust that marked the pandemic?

-We, in terms of economic operators, both from Macau and from Portugal, do not have that terror over our heads, because today the means of communication are so abundant that it is so easy to understand how the product is, how it is treated at its origin… I will give you an example: I have a special client in Macau, who only sells in five-star resorts, and sometimes there are products that we are loading at the warehouse, in Portugal, and we have to be with a camera showing him how we are positioning them. Even because there are situations where, if you put a wooden box of wine on top of cardboard boxes of wine, all it takes is for a bottle to break, which destroys the labels. The same happens with olive oil…

-Trade between Portugal and Macau has been increasing or decreasing?

-There was an increase until the pandemic. Even because in the case of wines and olive oil, these are products that until a few decades ago were unknown in the Orient by most consumers. What happens is that whatever is quantity, we don’t have the capacity to “be there”, so we have to bet on that niche of maybe 10% of the Chinese who have money, who already give 130 million or 140 million, if not more… It is a very desirable market. So, we have been succeeding in quality products, that is, our increase in volume has also been an exponential increase in value. Every time I transport a container of wine to Macau, the value that goes inside oscillates between 290 and 350 thousand Euros, because they are different brands, but top of the line and of high quality. In the case of ham, this product has to be transported at a controlled temperature. From the time it leaves the production site until it arrives in Macau, there can be no temperature fluctuation. The great drama in getting to Macau is that there are products that cannot withstand the transit time, so they have to go by plane… and air transport is extremely expensive.

-Do you export more from Portugal to Macau than from Macau to Portugal?

-Well, exports from Macau to Portugal are practically nil. The great difficulty, which also happens in exports from Portugal to Macau, is that we don’t have a movement that allows a direct connection. For example, we can’t sell fresh cheese in Macau because of the transit time we have to take to get that cheese from Portugal to Macau, because it has to go at least from here to Hong Kong… We’ve already had situations where it had to go to Taiwan and Shanghai and from Shanghai to Macau, which means that even by plane the transit time is very long for the durability and quality of the products.

-How long, on average, does it take for goods to be transported from Portugal to Macau?

-By sea, speaking of the post-pandemic, unfortunately it can take up to 90 days. Due to the problems in the logistics management of the international chain during and after the pandemic, we have not yet returned to normality. And the transit time of the ships is longer. They are slower because there are systematic bottlenecks in the main ports of the world. When we are talking about food products they usually have expiration periods. Many times, the expiration time wears off on the way, which doesn’t even allow it to be sold, because the buyer doesn’t even think about buying the product if the expiration period is almost reached. These are problems that we face and that are invisible. It is a serious problem that we have been facing in recent years, which has reduced our sales capacity, not because our products are no longer appetizing or because we are not competitive, but because of the difficulties in managing the logistics chain that can destroy the possibility of selling or buying products.

Source: Tribuna de Macau