Portugal’s Economy Minister, Manuel Caldeira Cabral, said today that he is monitoring the situation at the Cimpor cement plant in Loulé which temporarily has suspended production.
On June 9 this year, Cimpor’s management suspended workers’ contracts at the Loulé plant, one of the three remaining cement plants in Portugal.
Questioned by the communist MP, Paulo Sá, Cabral today said that this is a matter that the Government is monitoring and that "it deserves our attention and obviously worries us."
"I have had meetings with Cimpor, it is a situation that has to do with the decrease of demand, we want Cimpor to continue to maintain its presence and employment level in Portugal and we think that we must work with the company, listening also to the workers," said the minister.
The knock-on effects of Cimpor’s standstill already have been felt at Faro docks where exports of cement to Africa were handled. Some 16 workers face being laid-off as there is nothing for them to do apart from maintenance and some light weeding.
Faro’s Mayor, Rogério Bacalhau, has his eye on the dock area in Faro and wants to turn it into another marina and a quayside for visiting tourist boats.
The mayor, still misty-eyed over an economically suicidal sea link to Morocco, now has become besotted with the 'marine economy’ ever since the Minister of the Sea announced that marinas are a great way of hauling in money for very little work.
As for the cement factory, having Angola as you number one customer was always going to be problematic as, sure enough, when the orders stop, so does production.
Comments
Is it cheaper than the 1000 other options available? More likely the contract is [was] just a remnant of an old relationship [of one type or another].
The Loule plant is an eyesore, and cement production is an energy hungry industry. But it's also a very important strategic one.
It would be unfortunate to lose one of the last industries in the Algarve; and we all use the stuff after all.