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.
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.
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.
The Central Fruit and Vegetable Market’s mushrooms campaign has got off to the worst start in the past five years. The lack of rain and the high temperatures recorded in September and October led to a mushroom shortage in a season when mushrooms play an important role at the Market.
The Fruit Attraction trade fair, organised by FEPEX and IFEMA, has only been held three times but has already made a name for itself as the premier meeting point of the fruit and vegetable sector in Spain. At least that is how it seems, given the turnout at this year’s event which was held in Madrid between 19 and 21 October.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The ‘5-a-Day’ campaign promoted by Mercabarna and the Barcelona and Province Fruit and Vegetable Wholesalers’ Business Association (AGEM) is kicking off the 2011-2012 school year with an important new feature: a new-look website www.5aldia.es.