The construction works, which will have a surface area of ten thousand square metres, will begin at the end of the year, with the enterprise hoping to have it running in 2 years’ time.

“We’re finalising the project,” Daniel Redondo, general director of J. Carranca Redondo, Licor Beirão’s producer, told Lusa, “but it’s coming along quickly since we have an urgency to get it off the ground as soon as possible.” The new production unit should employ 40 people once operations are at “cruising speed.”

According to Redondo, this factory will answer the need “to increase production capacity” at a time when the company is making “a big push to grow the brand internationally.”

“We need a bigger storage zone for our dry products, there’ll be some production of specific products, new filling lines and new processes for finishing bottles, some innovation in bottling, which will allow products to be made up at a rate we require,” the director-general highlighted, stating that with their current installations, the company wouldn’t be able to grow.

The ten million euros that’s going into the factory’s construction and the purchase of equipment for it are the main investment for the company at the moment, betting on “the commercial area and marketing” to carve a market share outside of Portugal.

“Exports make up, at this time, about 25% of our receipts and we hope that we can quickly get it to 50%. It’s a target that’s being developed for a few years from now, but we’re looking to speed it up,” Daniel Redondo shared.

Recently, the brand has been doing business in Spain and wishes to grow in other European countries like France and Germany, where it already has some presence. “In France and Germany, we’re partnering with another organisation. In the past, we’ve had the Portuguese community market, but we want to also expand outside that community and be a product that’s asked for throughout the country, in general. We want to stop being an ethnic product and become a global brand,” the director-general explained.

For Daniel Redondo, this project “is a marathon” and a “difficult process.”

“It’s a very specific brand and we’ll be gaining consumers bit by bit, who understand and value Portuguese culture,” he clarified, noting the big connection between Licor Beirão and Portuguese identity.

For the director-general, the fact that Licor Beirão is “such a Portuguese brand” also allows the company to profit from the increase in tourism in Portugal itself.