Press Releases

Date: 26/11/2022
Category: Press Releases

Saint Augustine said, when referring to death:

“Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Give me the name you have always given me. I’m not far away, just on the other side of the road… You will see me again… transfigured and happy”.

With this reflection in the form of a prayer full of faith and hope, we remember Pedro Martínez Cutillas, who would have turned 91 years old on April 8, 2022, an event that has come to prolong the affection and admiration that all of us who knew him felt for him.

Once again the great and heartfelt memory that has remained and will remain since that day on November 26, 2021, in which such a regrettable and irretrievable loss deprived us of the excellence of his working philosophy as a businessman, his artistic and cultural sensitivity, his demand for rigor and continuous effort, his open and spontaneous character, his cordiality, his understanding and his simplicity that so much enlightened in his life; in summary, of his great humanity.

On the anniversary of his death, we remember that although his physical presence is no longer with us, his love and legacy live on.

We remember his strength, his courage and his determination, the inspiring testimony of how perseverance, innovation and entrepreneurial vision can take a person from modest beginnings to the pinnacle of success.

Today we celebrate his mark and his history. We commemorate her life and her existence, conscious, proud of the privilege we had to be part of her. We applaud his efforts and celebrate his triumphs, his desires, dreams and purposes and everything that, with his joy and passion, made him unique in our hearts.

Remembering his devoted affection, dedication and support helps us to keep his memory alive and to feel his presence in our daily lives.

Together in eternity. You will always be remembered. Death is not the end and in that hope we will find ourselves on the road.

“Integrated and Catalan.” This is how the murcian who accompanies us, son of the town of Jumilla, who has lived in Catalonia for half a century, describes himself. Almost as long as Pedro Martínez Cutillas is an entrepreneur. Many projects have excited this man throughout his professional career, although he confesses that the apple of his eye is EMMSA, the firm to which we will dedicate this page.

 

“When it comes to defining yourself as an entrepreneur, there are two aspects to take into account. Firstly, age, and secondly, whether you are a promoter or an heir,” he explains. “Being an entrepreneur is not only creating a business, but also running it so that it prospers year after year. Anyway, I know that if I had inherited the firm, things would be different.” And he concludes, “The entrepreneur is not made, is born.”

 

His life is the best example: “You could say that at the age of 16 I was already a millionaire. At that age, I set up my first tire retreading shop in the village. There I had six employees, whom I had trained myself, working for me”. A few years later, aware of the “future of the metalworking industry”, he moved to Madrid to attend courses on subjects related to that discipline. Our protagonist has always combined his life as a businessman with the life of a student. In this sense, it could be said that he has followed the reverse order of what is usual: “The few university students who decide to start a business do so after finishing their studies”. Today Pedro has a degree in business administration: “As a businessman, I hired private tutors in the evenings to prepare me for the university entrance exams for the over-25s. Little by little, I trained myself. I knew that I needed it and that I would need it more and more. Culture is one of the foundations of any business. You need to be able to sit down at a table and negotiate on a one-to-one basis”.

 

This and other knowledge served him, already in a new company, to “electrify the railway line that joined Barcelona and Mataró”. In that second business, our interlocutor had also trained his own welders. That order was the starting shot for EMMSA: “I had the certainty of dedicating myself to a product that had not yet been well introduced in Spain: the assembly of industries”.

 

“Since then, we have constantly evolved. From arc welding, we have gone on to manufacture and assemble all types of equipment for the chemical, petrochemical, hydraulic and automotive industries…. In short, all branches of heavy and semi-heavy industry”, he summarizes. “We have a subsidiary in Tarragona, Auxiquímica and another one in Huelva, P.H., which manufacture the necessary elements to carry out our work. Occasionally, depending on the size of the plant, we move our portable workshops to the construction site. The research constantly carried out by the multinationals companies that we work with in search of new products, guarantees the continuity of the orders they request. Each new product requires either a new plant or an extension of the existing one. Our work does not end once the factory is delivered, it also continue to be necessary to handle the maintenance for those facilities. When a company has prestige inside and outside the state borders, 90% of the contracts come on their own. Reliability and quality are our best advertising. References are passed on from one client to another.”

 

Part of EMMSA’s success lies in the continuous renovation to which the company is subjected: “We acquire new machines very frequently, in order to increase our performance and provide our customer with a total guarantee on our work. A machine only pays for itself in two or three years. If we want to keep up with the times, we have to pay close attention to the global market for machine technology. Most customers don’t hire you for the price of the service, but for the quality.” And guarantees also entail safety, an issue that is “paramount: Ours is an activity with a high occupational risk. The regulations in this matter are very demanding, and have led to higher prices. We give a training course on these issues to new employees when they join the company”. And the security of their contracts? “The management staff consists about thirty senior engineers. We have highly qualified personnel. We subject the assemblies to rigorous tests to check their efficiency”. The data speak for themselves: “Today we are contracted by clients from countries as far away as India, Brazil, etc.”.

 

Pedro admits that when he started EMMSA’s adventure almost 50 years ago, he never imagined it would become so big, to the point of financing its own customers: “It is a great sacrifice to start a business without money. Peseta by peseta, you generate your own capital. The illusion is not to make money sometimes, but to win the client.” Today EMMSA is present “practically all over Spain, although the head office is in Barcelona. We have 20 subcontracted companies working for us, which multiplies the number of workers, which today is around 3,000, distributed among different countries. For many years now, our customers have included leading firms and multinationals from all over the world”. This does not prevent our protagonist from preserving the “family business” philosophy that has always characterized them. He is also aware that “modern life involves continuous mergers between big business monsters in order to be more competitive. It is increasingly evident that the big fish eats the small fish. Small firms do not have the resources to fight against this fact”.

 

To face this and other challenges, our protagonist is not only confident in his own abilities, but also in the abilities of his team: “It is thanks to them that my words are on this page. I admire and respect them. Most of my engineers have been working for EMMSA practically since they finished their degree.” The secret to such a loyal workforce lies in the fact that “the employees see the employer all the time. My doors are always open to the general manager as well as to the last operator of the firm. Respect does not exclude freedom of communication; we have meetings all the time.” Trust, loyalty and quality. This is the tripod that guarantees EMMSA’s success.

 

Source: © TESTIMONIOS PARA LA HISTORIA, S.L EDITORA.