Ensured food supply via supermarkets and reoriented textile factories towards the production of masks

 

Gonçalo LOBO XAVIER
Confederation of Portuguese Business

In the retail sector we never stopped working - we worked harder than ever, especially with food and other primary consumer goods! In the first instance, we needed to guarantee that supermarkets could continue to supply the public: we needed to stay open, secure national farming production and work closely with toilet paper enterprises! (laughs)

As the lockdown restrictions started to ease, we asked the government to restart the economy - we needed to re-open the country and get people back to work and back in business, always with a strong focus on public health.

We explained to the General Directorate for Health that supermarkets could open, whilst securing the health of our teams, consumers and workers. In parallel, we looked for solutions with textile factories which were temporarily unable to carry out their normal business, to organise the production and sale of masks in supermarkets. Our goal was to produce and distribute masks that could be used a number of times for supermarket staff. We succeeded by re-orienting the production of textile factories and enterprises to produce the much-needed masks.

Together we will stay stronger!

Work organisation