Quesería La Antigua has received the Award for Digitalization and Innovation within the SME of the year 2022 granted by Banco Santander and the Chamber of Commerce.The event was attended by the president of the Provincial Council, Javier Iglesias; the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Benjamín Crespo; the director of Communication of the Junta de Castilla y León, Julio López; the regional director of Banco Santander in Castilla y León, Javier Martín; as well as councilors of the City Council of Salamanca and civil and military authorities who filled the auditorium of the Chamber.
Educa Online Program Award
Within the Pyme framework of the year 2022 this award for Digitalization and Innovation gives visibility and recognizes the La Antigua Educa Online program that we launched in 2021 when the pandemic did not allow us to visit schools. In this way, we also highlighted the impulse of Industry 4.0 in rural areas. The Educa Online project (online cheese workshops) was created with the aim of reducing the existing digital divide and thus promote Industry 4.0 in companies in rural areas.
With a pandemic in the middle that prevented bringing cheese culture closer to children, the marketing and communication team launched the online program, with a virtual visit to the factory and a cheese-making workshop in the classroom itself, following the instructions of La Antigua’s staff and with the help of teachers. The program is the continuity, in a year like 2021 of La Antigua Educa, which in 2022 returned to the classrooms of Salamanca and Zamora with almost 2,000 schoolchildren learning to make cheese again in schools and a special Baby Educa, which for the first time went to kindergartens and children’s centers to play at making cheese.
Spreading the cheese culture
Jesus Cruz and Fernando Fregeneda, partners of Gestión Agro Ganadera and Quesería La Antigua, received the award from the vice presidents of the chamber, Alberto Díaz and Alberto García.
Cruz recalled that 20 years ago, on October 2, 2002, the first production of first cheeses left the factory.
This 2022 we celebrate our anniversary with a #”20Contigo” and if it is always special and emotional to collect an award, this year it is joined by the nostalgia of looking back and seeing the road travelled and now recognized with an award like this. In the area of digitalization and innovation, in 2021 an automation system will be introduced in the factory in order to manage the entire traceability issue, automating everything from reception to dispatch. Thanks to this technological innovation, the route of farmers is registered, the liters of each route, temperature… All the manufacturing processes are tracked, the exit of the cheeses from the brine… But today the Banco Santander and the Chamber of Commerce of Salamanca and La Gaceta de Salamanca reward a program like La Antigua Educa Online that is undoubtedly the first link to understand the cheese culture.
Fernando Fregeneda was especially grateful to receive this award at home. Gestión Agro Ganadera and Quesería La Antigua are headquartered in Salamanca. The work of the Cruz and Fregeneda families has made it possible that today we are a benchmark in the dairy sector in Castilla y León (more than 10% of the milk produced in the region is invoiced in Salamanca) and that through our brand ‘Queserías La Antigua’ we continue to transmit soul and passion by betting on tradition, but also on innovation, design and digitalization.
It was not easy to get into classrooms and make virtual cheese with children. We were separated in many cases half a hundred km, a digital blackboard and many audiovisual problems still in schools and in our own factory, because we have to recognize that most of our villages are not yet equipped with something as necessary as the Internet. But we did it, and we also did it with students with special educational needs, who teach us things in every Educa. Now we are immersed in another great project, we will be the first 100% accessible cheese factory in Europe, but we reserve that for the next edition of these awards. The Educa online project was a bet for culture, for the future, for education, for digitalization and innovation that today is rewarded with this award and we are very proud to bet on real programs for the dissemination of cheese culture in our land. Thanks to the Chamber of Commerce, to Banco Santander, to our families and especially to our children who are already preparing to continue this legacy. Congratulations to the winners and thanks again to all the family of Quesería La Antigua who always reminds us that “eating cheese produces happiness”.
For its part, the company Feltrero División Arte S.L. received the VI SME of the Year Award 2022 of Salamanca . Feltrero was born as a small company with eight employees dedicated to the transport of goods that later focused on removals. He then specialized in transport in the art sector where he has more than three decades of experience, which has led him to gain the trust of major museums and exhibition spaces both nationally and internationally. It has more than 150 employees, with headquarters in Salamanca, but with 20,000 m2 of professional space in Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza and Granada, which will soon be expanded with more than 8,000 meters in Castellanos de Moriscos. Its contribution to job creation, its efforts to grow and be known, the training of its employees, its commitment to innovation, quality control and its social responsibility work have made it worthy of this year’s business award.
In addition to the SME of the Year award, 3 more runner-up prizes were awarded in the following categories: Internationalization, has been awarded to César Nieto Group (Guijuelo)dedicated to the elaboration and commercialization of Iberian products; Training and Employmenthas been for Limcasa Construcciones y Proyectos S.Lfor its continuous commitment to business development to offer quality services; and Sustainable Business of Salamanca has been awarded to Revisan Iberian S.L.one of the largest producers of Iberian products in Guijuelo, stands out for its wide variety of manufactured products and its awareness of optimizing resources and manufacturing in a sustainable way at all levels.
