We have had the pleasure of talking to Fernando Garrido, Head of Eleko’s commercial department. He tells us that the company was founded in 1968 by Mr. Secundino Garrido, an industrial electrical and mechanical expert with experience in factory assemblies and, therefore, from the very beginning, focused its electrical material distribution activity on the industrial customer.
The company has been growing and evolving along with its technology and that of its suppliers, until it now has more than 80 highly qualified workers and 6 points of sale in Galicia and Asturias, with a turnover of €20m.
This evolution has also led them to attack markets such as industrial pneumatics, telecommunications, robotics and renewable energies, and they have a good stock and their own technical specialists in these and other product ranges.
Why did you decide to go for Mindtech in its fourth edition in 2025?
Exhibiting at Mindtech allows us to showcase the latest in the most technological products from our main ‘industrial’ suppliers: Siemens, Phoenix Contact, Schneider, Rockwell Automation, SMC, Yaskawa, Patlite, Datalogic, etc.
Fernando Garrido, Head of the Commercial Department of Eleko
In the 2025 edition we will bring back our Yaskawa Collaborative Robot and many more interesting things that will surprise more than one of you.
What is the added value for your company to participate in this fair?
Customers will find all the technical specialists of the aforementioned brands at our stand and a lot of product to touch and configure.
What will you present at Mindtech 2025?
It is too early to mention them, but many will be related to Cybersecurity, Industrial Control, Robotics, Industrial Secure and Wireless Communications, Laser Marking and many others.
What do you think is the differential value of the metallurgical industry and its associated technologies in the Iberian Pole in particular?
A country that is only about services, without a primary and secondary sector, is a country doomed to poverty and within the secondary sector, the metal industry is losing more and more value and activity in the Iberian Pole, especially in Spain. In this sense, we should look at our neighbouring country, Portugal, and take note of how wealth is generated.
What challenges do you see facing the industry today?
Beyond theoretical and ethereal objectives, such as digitalisation, sustainability or measuring and reducing the carbon footprint, we must bear in mind that, at an industrial level, we are competing in a global market and fighting against countries such as India and China, whose objectives are to produce as well as possible, as quickly and efficiently as possible, and as economically and competitively as possible.
In this respect, there are three problems that need to be tackled without further delay.
- Reduce energy prices to lower operating costs.
- Reduce absenteeism and automate production lines as much as possible. By 2023, 73% of the 553,052 robotic industrial installations will be in Asia. Only 15% in Europe. Implementing technology helps to overcome labour shortages.
- Promote the training of qualified specialists. Without them, it is impossible to innovate or implement any type of technology in our factories.
If we do not address these three key challenges soon, it will be difficult for us to produce quality products at competitive prices in the foreseeable future.
What is needed to meet these challenges and maintain the industry’s competitiveness?
The energetic:
- Move towards real liberalisation of the energy sector.
- The economic, sustainable and ecological growth model is inefficient and expensive. Nuclear power plants could be an option, an example is France, one of the countries with the lowest electricity prices, 72% of its energy generation comes from nuclear power.
- Less energy taxation until a real energy transition is achieved.
Automation:
- As for factory automation, government aid should be speeded up and boosted, as is being done in other countries. The management of Next Generation funds is not being as good as it should be, as these funds, for the most part, do not reach the industries.
Specialist training:
Technical university courses need to be reformed and vocational training, where good work is being done, needs to be improved and strengthened. Continuous teacher training must be promoted, given the speed at which technology is evolving, and teachers must be provided with the latest technical material.
Come and visit them at stand C03 and C04!