How Gullón has turned the healthy biscuit into a 690 million business

Wholemeal and high-fiber biscuits. Also with chocolate or caramel touches. Some gluten-free, lactose-free, and salt-free. Round, square, or even dragon-shaped. In Catalonia, Gullón biscuits are a classic on supermarket shelves. Their green logo appears stamped on boxes of dozens of different formats, each aimed at a specific consumer. With over 130 years of history, it is a historic company in the Spanish biscuit sector, but also a European giant: in 2024 it had a turnover of 690 million euros, directly employs over 2,100 people, and is present in 125 countries.

But how did they do it? The answer begins far from the major industrial centers. Specifically, in a small town in northern Palencia with a long biscuit-making tradition: Aguilar de Campo. At the end of the 19th century, the area had particularly favorable conditions for this sector to take root and flourish: on the one hand, it had access to wheat from the Tierra de Campos region, in Castile and León, which was of high quality; on the other, it benefited from the arrival of sugar through the port of Santander. It was in this environment that the confectioner from Zamora, José Gullón Barrios, founded the company in 1892.

Gullón sprouted in a small local ecosystem and quickly gained momentum. In the early decades of the 20th century, the company consolidated itself as a family company rooted in the territory, linked to a daily consumer product and a municipality that over the years became the mecca of biscuits. In fact, during the Civil War, Gullón managed to maintain production levels and ensure supply thanks to its strategic location, very close to the raw material.

Gullón's first major leap forward, however, did not arrive until the 1950s. Gullón began to diversify its offering beyond traditional biscuits: it launched new products such as maria biscuits, golden biscuits, wafers, or chocolate ring doughnuts. The company had understood that growing also meant expanding the catalogue and adapting to the changing tastes of consumers. This diversification fully crystallized in 1979, when the company put the first wholemeal maria biscuit on sale. It was the prelude to the strategic shift the company made a few years later: the commitment to healthy products.

Towards the niche of the healthy biscuit

The major turning point in Gullón's recent history came in the eighties. It was then that María Teresa Rodríguez, widow of José Manuel Gullón, took command of the family business after her husband's death. She did so alongside Juan Miguel Martínez Gabaldón, the executive who would serve as CEO and general manager, and with whom she would steer a new phase of growth that would end up redefining the company. If until then Gullón had been primarily a family firm well-rooted in its territory, from that moment on it began to become a player with much greater ambition, both within the Spanish market and abroad.

One of the keys to this new stage was the firm commitment to healthy biscuits, an area that was still little explored in Spain. After introducing the first wholemeal maria biscuit in the Spanish market at the end of the seventies, Gullón reinforced this line in 1986 with the launch of a new wholemeal biscuit made with vegetable oils. The entry into the new millennium confirmed that this commitment was serious. In 2000 Gullón launched Ligera, a range of low-salt biscuits with no added sugar, and two years later expanded the offering with Diet Nature with no sugar. In parallel, the company began to deploy subsidiaries abroad and, above all, made a decisive industrial leap: in 2003 it inaugurated the Gullón II plant in Aguilar de Campoo, which at that time became the largest in the sector in Europe.

In 2015 the company inaugurated the VIDA plant, intended to strengthen the production of dietary and healthy products, and continued to expand its catalogue with new ranges such as Vitalday, Zero no sugar, Hookies or Vitalgrain. The generational handover was formalized in 2019, when María Teresa Rodríguez handed over the presidency to her daughter, Lourdes Gullón.