LISBON – Relying on his long-term partnership with suppliers in China, Portuguese businessman Lourenço Rosa supplied his country with medical devices in urgent need, such as face masks, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before March 2020, Rosa had imported gifts and advertising materials from China, which he frequently visited, often spending there three or four months a year for 20 years.
When the world closed down and panic set in, Rosa recalled that he wasted no time to contact his partners and started to import medical devices to help his country’s hospitals, municipalities and supermarkets.
“People knew that I had the know-how of importing from the East. A lot of people started to consult me on how to order masks, gloves, visors,” he told Xinhua.
Through a network of representatives on the ground, Rosa took pains to guarantee the security of orders. However, in the early months of the pandemic, his entire logistics and transport chain collapsed.
“There were no planes available... not even for the big global carriers. The one I hired, which was supposed to deliver in three days, said it would need nine weeks,” Rosa said.
Eventually, he decided to charter a plane, which was “the first planeload of hospital material to arrive in Europe” after the beginning of the pandemic.
“It was a remarkable feat, as even Lisbon airport was not working at the time – our plane was the only one to land there,” he said.
Rosa had to spend around 20 hours a day to make his plan work. “My Chinese partners and colleagues helped me a lot. They would go to the factories to monitor the production and then guarantee the acquisition of the materials and their shipment to Portugal.”
China is “a great place to buy, because you can get quality products at good prices,” and “it is very good to work with the Chinese, because they are serious, trustworthy people, who keep their promises,” Rosa said.
His company supplies medical devices to the private sector and the Portuguese state and has already negotiated tens of millions of euros worth of deliveries with the public administration since the beginning of the pandemic.
Relying on the incentives of his country’s 2020 business development program, Rosa has also founded a face mask factory in Lisbon and plans to launch a glove factory in 2023, all in cooperation with his Chinese partners. – Xinhua
Undated file photo of Portuguese businessman Lourenço Rosa – Photo courtesy of D.R. via CNN Portugal
