Portugal's favourite maker of porcelain sanitaryware, Valadares, is to start up again under new ownership.
Rising from the U-bend of the insolvent Valadares is new company ARCH, run by a group of former employees who witnessed Valadares going down the tubes two years ago.
The new company will rebuild the sanitaryware brand and create 135 jobs in the process, more when things get flowing again.
ARCH expects to start production early next year and will be focusing on export markets, particularly Asia and the Middle East, according to one of the new bosses, Henrique de Barros.
The ARCH design team aims to create new products as it is the only company in Europe that has a design through to finished product capability and is to rise above a bog standard range.
"The products have always been high-end, high-quality, but lacked the international dimension that we now want to achieve," said Henrique de Barros, flushed with success at the signing ceremony of the cooperation agreement that enables ARCH to start firing up the kilns again.
This is no cuddly, wasteful cooperative as with an eye to the bottom line the initial 135 workers, most of them former employees, will be taken on a lower salary than before.
"The wage level was very high and it would be a problem if we kept it. Our aim was to resize the company, making it smaller and more rational" said Henrique de Barros.
The liquidity problems at Valadares, a company created in 1921 and based in Vila Nova de Gaia, began in 2010 and two years later it was a busted flush.
The agreement between those administering the insolvency and ARCH involves selling off part of the original factory space to Italian clothing company La Perla where another 200 jobs will be created.
Comments
In the comments after the Dail Mail article; most of the commenters interestingly being from our ex-colonies who must also have a 'Portuguese Inferiority Problem' - as an Aussie explained
"The messy toilets, if anything like here in Australia, are where the Portuguese was standing when trying to leave our bars and restaurants without paying".
So - there you have it. A mystery explained .... although, as also often pointed out - does the UK need yet another foreign weirdo loitering round our public toilets??
Presumably trying to 'make friends' and 'practice his english'.
Makes a change from 'badger watching', I suppose.