Francisco Barbeito, president of Pontevedresa Group, receives the global directors award for his professional career

10-7-2015

Today at 7.30 pm, at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Gas Natural Fenosa museum in A Coruña, the first minister of Galicia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and Isidro Fainé, president of CaixaBank and president of CEDE (Spanish Confederation of Directors and Executives), presented the global directors awards.

In the setting of the CEDE directors’ congress held in A Coruña, Francisco Barbeito of the Pontevedresa Group received an award for his professional lifetime achievement.

In 1959, Francisco Barbeito Castro set up Cristalería Pontevedresa S.A., laying the foundations for a family business that would triumph, thanks to a remarkable ability to face the unknown.

His passion for pioneering technologies became a determining factor for the future of glass. In 1960, a silver nitrate solution was patented and applied to mirror production; in 1989, the first line of flat tempered glass was produced in northern Spain; and in 2015, cutting-edge techniques for ultrathin curved tempered glass were introduced.

Francisco Barbeito has always been ahead of his time. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, when entrepreneurial drive and innovation were unheard of, Barbeito sought out novel products that would add value and set his small glass business apart. With the backing of the family and under the new general management of his son, Francisco Barbeito Otero, Cristal Pontevedresa has become the Pontevedresa Group, a leader in the glass sector in Galicia and Spain, working on international projects in France, the UK, Italy and the Maghreb, yet still very much a family business.