How did you get into this business ?

In 1985, I was hired by a small company that was starting out in the Fresh Fish pavilion. I put a lot of energy into my job and largely contributed to its prosperity by developing the sourcing, often even when on leave in Portugal, and by managing the accounts team as well as my commercial activity. I left the company six years later to set up my own business on 1st April 1991. I worked on my own, in a small office opposite Belle-Epine, while selling seafood products that I used to import mostly from Portugal, but also from Senegal, Cape Verde and the Azores. I used to load up at the airport and at night I would deliver the goods to Rungis and to Paris restaurants. At 11 pm I would go off to do my shopping until 3 am. Then I would rest for three hours in my little office, before starting up my rounds again at 6 am. I would then do the buying and selling on the telephone, handling the mail and accounts, then icing the fish, preparing orders and, once again, taking delivery of the fish at the airport between 10 and 11 pm. I worked like that 24/7 for three years, with a low wage to keep production costs down and to help the company finance itself, an intangible principle I got from my accountancy training.

How did you company develop ?

At first, I worked mostly with Portugal (John Dory, sea bream, red mullet) but also with West Africa (grouper, Couch’s sea bream, tread-fin, swordfish, crayfish from Cape Verde).  In those days, I used to handle 1 to 2 tons/day. Having a set-up at Rungis has given me a certain stability and professional recognition. In 1992-93, I set up a catering service and Antero Da Silva, an excellent professional with a background in hotel-restaurant management joined me in 1995 to manage this department and together we gave the business a boost.

At that time, I bought other stalls that helped me to triple our sales floor and turnover. However after a series of bad breaks, we had to get new markets and so I supplied the first Carrefour central purchasing agency with exotic fish, which represented about 40 shops. Similarly, I expanded the sourcing to Brazil, Chile, Mauritania, Algeria, etc. Then, in February 2003, we developed Japanese catering and we increased our sourcing on tuna with this in mind. Furthermore, we developed our sales on the floor considerably with a team of very competent new sales people.With an efficient, performing and quality commercial policy, our annual turnover rose by 18%, for several years in a row. In our business, you need top quality people, sufficient own funds, a dynamic operation and a lot of trust with your supplies and clients. In the immediate future, we are planning to develop our production capacity by a serious investment in our work tool.

What is your product line ? 

Because of our multiple-specialty activity and to meet the catering trade demand, our line includes all seafood.  We cover a broad line of imports, good French fish, labelled products and a line of “small boat” catches. Over the years, we have adapted to the demand from the catering trade by developing fish preparation (cleaning, filleting, cutting, etc.) and we very rarely deliver whole fish. To that end, our qualified professionals, supervised by Antero Da Silva for the French catering trade and Franck Dos Santos for the Japanese catering, do a lot of work: preparation, product tracking, distribution quality, meeting deadlines. In short, the customer’s order is perfectly filled.

What do you think of Rungis Market ?

We are established in the centre of the world’s largest market where we benefit from exceptional logistics that really save time for us. Rungis is an ocean of quality, and ideal, essential place for our activity and we could not be elsewhere. However, the charges are too high and weight heavily on the company’s budget.