I initially worked very closely with the group’s CEO, other board members, and my unit heads. At the time, I think that was a critical part of the success we later enjoyed. I really enjoyed doing it together because we had many lively discussions, many brainstorming sessions, and thought deeply about the fundamentals of the business in order to decide what the team was going to do and anticipate how our main competitors were going to react. I remember that Pedro Morais Leitão and I would go for long walks to discuss our options. The time we invested contributed significantly to the ideas that helped propel. It was a very exciting period and part of the reason for the success of the last few years.

But I’d say the different businesses needed different approaches:

Our strategy to transform the terminal was to think of it as a piece of our business that could become a differentiating element and help us gain access to the international market. Instead of looking at the terminal not as a business in itself, we preferred to link it to our other businesses and make it a competitive advantage. I think we did a pretty good job of reformulating our way of working the region’s interland and setting up our way of access to the international market.

Simultaneously, we set up a trading team, redesigned the supply structure, set up relationships with large companies, and negotiated contracts: supply and purchase contracts for various products. We wanted to gain credibility and show that we could add something new to the market. We were no longer a terminal manager but rather a fuel product flow manager.

The terminal’s teams started to be enriched with sophisticated profiles and functions. The team got stronger. We also started to understand how much value there was in working more closely with the sister company that was just by, but with which there was little connection: Prio Bio, which has an ultra-sustainable biofuels production unit and is today a leader in its market.

On the other hand, at Prio Bio, we only needed to accelerate the path that was already underway with the previous team. That path was based on the understanding that the market was going to change fundamentally in the way it would produce and value biofuels.

What the previous team had realised was that we needed, in this bio-diesel factory, we needed to let go of palm oils and other food oils and migrate to the reuse of waste oils, adding value to them. Starting with a product that has negative value and building positive value into it resulted in a highly valued ecological product. By doing that we had the same product, coming from the circular economy and were recovering an arrosive product (which was a problem), thus adding value.

By doing this well, we would have a competitive advantage in the future, but to do so, we needed to change from being a very inward-looking organization to becoming proud and confident that we could do it. We needed to take more risks and believe that we could make a difference.

The result was amazing. We not only achieved absolutely extraordinary results at the factory, but also generated an appreciation for our products. We achieved this by combining our factory’s way of generating value with the differentiation that resulted from having the terminal. We built something that did not yet exist in the Portuguese market, which was a highly flexible logistics center tied to (and working very closely with) an ultra-sustainable biofuels production unit.

Combining the ultra-sustainable biofuels factory with the logistics, we were creating a new player with a differentiating element.

This symbiosis between the two units was only possible because we worked very well together, building greater trust within the whole team. That had a great influence on the purpose of what was being built, and I think it helped speed up the results and the work we were already doing.

This effort was done in parallel with reshaping our retail, as we had to invest in marketing to build the Prio brand. Prio had a very “regional network”. It was a very introverted brand, so we decided to brand it more as a futuristic, irreverent brand that would bring youth and positive energy to the system.

I remember very well that we promised never to say bad things about other competitors, but rather to elevate our speech. I think it helped a lot in building an internal culture, focusing on generating value, and affirming the brand. We also reformed the innovation unit as well as the gas unit, and we set up the first digital unit in our business. As a result, we set up the first mobile payment app, we set up a digital card project, we helped design an electric mobility app, which today is an independent company, and designed a very successful terminal strategy, all of which I am very proud of having helped build.

We digitised. In the digital project, we did some really cool things. We believe the world is already digitizing, and it won’t stop at the intangibles of our business; it will also reach the tangibles like transportables and heavy goods. The sector will be entirely disrupted by digital, and therefore, we have to be the ones to disrupt it.

I think we have an advantage in disrupting because of our positive irreverence. The desire to do more and better has worked very well for us, and the other companies in our market are very big. They do have more resources and strong financials, but we have the irreverence and the will to disrupt. I believe that if we do “more and better” for the market, we will lead because that’s where we are now. Plus, we are faster and more agile.