HISTORY OF CAFÉ FORTALEZA

Grupo Fortaleza began its activity at the end of the 19th century, in 1885 to be exact, when several members of the same family moved from a small town in the province of Tarragona, called Brafim, to Bilbao, a city that had already begun a booming industrial development.

Although the main reason was the commercialization of wines, an activity in which several generations had already participated, a series of events led them to make contact with coffee, the product they have focused on ever since.

These events were that the family opened several establishments for the sale of food products and exports of wine to America, and more specifically to Mexico.

Mexico, which at first paid for these purchases with noble metals, mostly silver, stopped doing so and they had no choice but to accept another product in demand in these colonial stores as payment: coffee.

This small activity forced them to roast it in the back of each of the establishments until at the dawn of the twentieth century, due to their reputation for quality, they had to set up a specific facility to meet the growing demand, as reflected in the press of the time, in the newspaper "El Pueblo Vasco".

The Fortaleza brand is originally from Mexico, from the beginning it was printed on the sacks from this country and they started to use it from the 1940s, when industrial packaging started to replace the traditional bulk sale in stores.

Although the central offices are still located in Bilbao, in 1968 the Bilbao production was transferred to Vitoria, with a new plant being built that was expanded in 1982 with the addition of a vacuum grinding plant (the first in Spain) and a new warehouse. In 1990, there was a new expansion of the grinding line, the entire production process was automated and the shipping warehouse was robotized.

In short, the investments made since the construction of the factory could exceed 2,000 million, the highest in the "non-multinational" sector.