News

Pere Brachfield: "There are three types of defaulters..."

With the crisis, late payments have become one of the biggest headaches for businesses. Pere Brachfield (www.perebrachfield.com) has been studying this problem and teaching people how to handle defaulters for over 20 years, working with different universities and business schools. He is also the director of the Centre for Default Studies and has written more books on this topic than anyone else in the world. Mr Brachfield gave a course on bad debtors at the Mercabarna Training Area in November.

Sònia Recasens, New Chair of Mercabarna

Sònia Recasens was appointed the new chair of Mercabarna at the company’s Board of Directors meeting on 3 November. Ms Recasens, who succeeds Jordi William Carnes, is the deputy mayor of Barcelona for Economics, Enterprise and Employment.

Mercabarna at the World Union of Wholesale Markets Conference in China

Around 260 representatives of wholesale markets from 23 countries attended the World Union of Wholesale Markets (WUWM) conference held in China from 18 to 21 October.

Mercabarna Represents the World's Wholesale Markets before the European Commission

Mercabarna managing director Montserrat Gil de Bernabé represented the World Union of Wholesale Markets (WUWM) when she took part in the high-level meeting organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry on contractual practices in the food supply chain.

Mercabarna Presents Food Safety Model to Sector Professionals from across the Mediterranean

The 4th International Green Med Forum, an annual event organised by the prestigious publication Green Med Journal that brings together parties involved in the fruit and vegetable sector from across the Mediterranean, was held in Tunisia from 28 to 30 September.

Barcelona Food Cluster Association: Cluster Businesses Discover Latest Fresh Produce Technologies at IRTA

The Barcelona Food Cluster Association, an organisation spearheaded by Mercabarna, is continuing to promote actions that can improve the competiveness of its food business members. The latest involved organising a visit to the Institute for Agrofood Research and Technology (IRTA) in Monells, Girona on 20 September, attended by nine companies. The visit was part of the activities scheduled within the innovation group the Association promotes.

Code of Business Practices for Entire Food Chain

Representatives of Catalan agricultural production and distribution have joined forces to create the Code of Good Business Practices throughout the entire food chain. The code is a memorandum of understanding with 54 commitments aimed at bolstering and improving relations among the parties in the chain.

Barcelona Food Cluster Association: New Technology Presented at Mercabarna to Manufacture Pre-Cooked Convenience Food

Can you imagine a machine that cooks food in industrial quantities in a minimum of time and maintains the same taste as homemade food? This is the pioneering technology that goes by the name ‘T’ developed by Foodtopía, a business which creates technology applications to manufacture pre-cooked convenience food for the foodservice channel.

Graduate in Business Management Wholesale Food

On July 7, will be held an information day on the 7th edition of the Postgraduate Diploma in Business Management Wholesale Food, course organized by the Association of Dealers Mercabarna (ASSOCOME) Triptolemos Foundation and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), which will begin in mid-October.

The working groups of the Association Food Cluster initiatives are beginning to define the future

The working groups of the Association of Food Cluster Barcelona Mercabarna, organization that promotes integrated and where the Consortium of the Zona Franca, 22 @ Barcelona ASSOCOME and 18 food companies, are already running. Groups, innovation processes, logistics and food safety, have made June the first meetings so that members know and firms begin to emerge initiatives and alliances.

The Food Bank increases presence in Mercabarna

The Food Bank Foundation expands its schedule to Mercabarna store and opened a new office building of Banks. All with one goal: to achieve maximum cooperation by companies in the food sector Mercabarna, and thus respond to the growing number of people, following the crisis, they need the help of organizations charities to survive.

Mercabarna weathering the financial storm

We all know the economic downturn is hitting sectors like construction and property hard and having a knock-on effect on other industries such as automobiles and restaurants.

Logistics as a Competitive Edge Tool

Around 40 sector workers, mostly from Mercabarna firms, attended the third congress on the Stimulus Plan for the Foodservice Cluster of Catalonia held in Mercabarna on 9 February, which discussed the importance of logistics as a tool to gain a competitive edge in the foodservice sector.

“Last Stop: Recycling” Results

The environmental awareness campaign Mercabarna ran from July 2010 to January 2011 helped remind market users of good practices with regard to separating the waste generated by their activity. The campaign was designed to provide information to users and to foster their ongoing collaboration as a basic requirement for upholding the high recycling levels attained at the market.

Mercabarna’s Increased Media Profile

Mercabarna is becoming increasingly better known to the public. To a large extent this is because the work it does and the events it has hosted in the market have been picked up on by the media more and more in recent years – a trend that was clearer than ever in 2010, when mentions in the press were up 54.5% on 2009.