The history of Casademont is the story of a dream. It is the story of the drive of a young man keen to work and carve a niche for himself in times when this was not exactly easy. His parents ran the grocery store in Bescanó (Girona), where they sold the products from the slaughter of pigs, which they themselves prepared. Jaume normally helped them. When his father died, he was the one who helped his mother continue producing the charcuterie products she sold in her business.
The Beginnings
Jaume Casademont combined the technical and business know-how necessary to initiate a business experience that would end up being a resounding success. Around 1956, by then a master charcuterie butcher, together with his wife he opened a small, 60 m2 workshop where he produced his first charcuterie products, which he sold in a shop they had in Girona. That original workshop began working to supply the Bescanó family shop and the new shop in Girona. The quality of the products and the incipient marketing strategy devised by Jaume Casademont (a product for every day of the week), achieved such a high level of success that many other shopkeepers began to order their products.Towards leadership of the sector
By the 1960s the workshop could no longer cope with the demand, and was extended with the gradual construction of a 2,000 m2 factory in the centre of Bescanó. The factory was barely 10 years old when it too became too small to meet the ever-increasing demand. So much so that at the end of the 1960s, Jaume Casademont purchased 3,500 m2 of land on the outskirts of Bonmatí, to which the production of cooked meats was transferred, while the charcuterie products continued to be produced in Bescanó. Jaume Casademont’s vision of the future became clear at the beginning of the 1970s. In the middle of the oil crisis, when caution was the most logical option, he decided to make the company’s biggest and most visionary investment. For years he had been buying up the plots of land adjoining his own in Bonmatí. This allowed him to build a large factory, with an area of 25,000 m2 which would launch the company definitively towards leadership of its sector. However, the political climate of closed borders was still limiting the market in Spain.The industrial expansion of the 1970s was followed by the commercial expansion of the 1980s-1990s. This was when Casademont took his greatest leap forward in the market, coinciding with the famous “At home, Casademont” marketing campaign and with the beginning of exports beyond the Pyrenees.
The company model
With a solid base founded on the values of a family company, and consolidated by its founder, Casademont's business culture is centred on an essential objective: to promote meat by preparing the best charcuterie products for the end consumer. The opening-up of foreign markets and Casademont’s commitment to selling its products not only in Europe, but in the rest of the world, made it necessary to adapt the product to the unique elements of each target market. The investment was very heavy and the process was complicated. The gamble paid off, and today Casademont exports 45% of its production to 70 countries in the 5 continents. With Jaume Casademont's death in December 2005, the company started out on a new phase, directed and promoted by his daughter, Adriana Casademont. In a sector as disperse as the meat sector, with over 4,000 factories in Spain, a change of direction was necessary in order to face up to the coming years with the security of a leading company.
