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Barcelona Visit

On the morning of Sunday 7th February, thirty-four students and four staff  set off for Barcelona, arriving in the early evening and looking forward to the Business related tours over the next few days.  Our Examination board has set recession as a theme for the June paper. Spain is in its sixth quarter of negative GDP growth, largely as a result of the collapse of its building industry; with unemployment at 17%; surely it would yield plenty of good examples?

A visit to Damm Breweries, production of about 4 million bottles per day and an automated warehouse including laser guided fork lift trucks without drivers set the tour off to a fine start. The Nou Camp or Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece La Segrada Familia  competed the day; during which it had not stopped raining.

Tuesday saw more rain and so was ideal for an ice cream factory.  We watched ice cream being made in modern stainless steel tanks, felt the temperature of the storage facilities at -20°C, and of course sampled the ice cream, which was excellent and fresh from the machine.

On Wednesday it stopped raining and we visited the family owned Cava producers Cordnui.  Our students commented on the amount of money needed to invest in the stock of 50 million bottles and participated in a tour of the caves. 

The Spanish recession; we discovered it had become an opportunity for all our producers: beer is drunk but more bought in super markets, we buy ice cream even if we have less money and in the UK we switched from Champagne to Cava this Christmas enabling Cordnui to achieve its aim of substantial exports to the UK.

It was an excellent set of visits. I would thank all the participants for being good company, our Year 13 students showed their great maturity and we know gained from being able to see actual businesses in action.