Transgourmet aims to become Spain's leading hospitality distributor.

GironaThe food distribution company Transgourmet Ibérica has set the goal of becoming the leading distributor in the hospitality sector throughout Spain. Based in Vilamalla, the company is celebrating its centenary this year at a very good time, as explained by CEO Lluís Labariu at the start of the celebrations held in Girona. "The key to reaching one hundred years is because, at different times in history, first the family and then the management team have been able to make the right decisions to adapt the company to the needs of each moment," said Labariu. With a turnover of more than 1.2 billion euros in 2024, Transgourmet Ibérica has been the company with the highest turnover in the Girona region for years.

Since 2019, they have embarked on a restructuring process that has led them to create a thousand new jobs in the last six years. The pandemic has not affected them particularly well either. "We came out quite well; the staff never stopped receiving pay and we didn't have any ERTOs," Labariu added. The company currently employs 2,700 people across Spain.

Pere Miquel i Estela founded the company in Figueres in 1925, and the only surviving son, Amadeu Miquel, 94, described his father as "a great entrepreneur with a keen business acumen." Miquel recalled that his grandfather was also a great entrepreneur and that at the end of the 19th century, he founded a cement company in Les Escaules that still exists today, Ciments Miquel, now in the fifth generation. "My father was the youngest and had to find his own way," said Miquel, who remembers the post-war period as even more difficult than the war itself "because the big problem was being able to buy something." Miquel also made a staunch defense of the family business.

In 1970, they opened Gros Mercat, the first cash and carry from Spain. "On a trip to England, I saw one and told my brothers we could open a similar one in Figueres," Miquel recalled. Currently, they have 70 cash and carries, have just purchased three properties in the islands from the Moyà Saus group and have three more planned, in Mercabarna, Leganés, and Fuerteventura.

The company was run by the Miquel family for 90 years until they sold it to a Chinese group in 2015. In 2021, this group sold it to the Transgourmet group, which belongs to the Swiss cooperative Coop.