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- (+351) 229 865 700 (Call to the national fixed network)
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The first warehouse of the company J. Soares Correia – Armazéns de Ferro, S.A. was located in Vila Nova de Gaia, on the ground floor of the house where the family that founded the company in the year 1907 lived.
With a family structure, the iron company has gone through the vicissitudes inherent to more than a century of existence, in which it has followed a trajectory which has taken it from the modest eighth place it occupied in iron sales in the north of the country, in the middle of the century, to a situation of market leadership, where it has remained for around three decades.
The first warehouse was supported by a reduced administrative and commercial structure, with around seven employees, appropriate to a little developed market, in which all the iron was imported, namely from France, Germany and Belgium, until the creation of the Siderurgia Nacional (National Steelworks), in 1960, which substantially changed this paradigm.
At that time, construction still absorbed very small quantities of iron and this material was used for rural purposes, such as the rims for the wheels of ox carts, the buckets for the norias or the spouts for collecting resin in the pine forests. It is curious that iron was also transported to the first warehouses of the company in ox carts: after being unloaded from the barges at the Gaia quay, these vehicles ensured the steep climb up to Soares dos Reis street, the company’s headquarters.
The distribution of iron was, for a large part of the 20th century, done by rail, to the interior of the country, until the acquisition of the first vehicle, an Opel Blitz. Signs of a distant time when the human arm ensured practically all tasks and which changed with the introduction of adequate equipment, such as the first travelling crane, at the end of the 60’s, whose installation proved so efficient that it was followed by a series of others that contributed to the development of the company and the significant improvement of working conditions.
In 1987, the company already had a market position which led to its listing on the stock exchange following an IPO of 25% of the capital. The steel products market is now dominated by J. Soares Correia – Armazéns de Ferro S.A., which expanded its activity through the acquisition of companies in the same area, particularly “M.Cardoso” and “José Pinto Magalhães” (in 1987) and “FerroBeiras” and “Transferro” (in 1990).
After the inevitable dispersion of capital, typical of a family organisation which was already in its fourth generation, in 1998 the Correia dos Santos branch acquired all the capital from the remaining heirs and concentrated the destiny of the company which thus gained a new generation of entrepreneurs. In a strategy of gradual expansion and national coverage, it created structures in Guarda, Palmela, Maia and Vila Real. The year 2000, when the headquarters and main warehouse were centralised in Maia, was a landmark in this evolution. Today, the company, certified by ISO 9001 in 2003, manages more than 100,000 m2 of facilities, equipped with the latest technology in weighing equipment, cargo handling, beam and sheet steel cutting lines, and concrete beam cutting and moulding machines, along with a significant fleet of heavy vehicles and a complex technological park to support the company’s information system.
With a view to internationalisation and with a strategy of accompanying our clients, in 2009 we incorporated J. Soares Correia Angola S.A..
We are proud of the fact that J. Soares Correia, remains in the same family, currently represented by the fourth and fifth generation, always trading in steel products and with the same motivation as always, to meet the needs and expectations of its valued customers.
