From family business to ownership of an investment fund
From Ibiricu de Egüés, cardboard trays, laminated sheets, manual or machine-assembled cardboard boxes, bottle separators, all made of different types of cardboard that are intended for the agri-food industry so that, for example, vegetables, fruits can travel. , vegetables, fish, meat, wine… They also supply suppliers of large chains such as Lidl or Carrefour and, in Navarra, they have Berlys and Martiko as clients, among others.
The cardboard and paper that Videcart uses as its main raw material comes from the same group’s paper mill, San Andrés, in Villava. From there, it reaches Ibiricu, where it is transformed into different products to which different types of processes are applied.
Forty years have passed since the Navarrese Viscarret family group, promoter of the San Andrés paper group, founded Videcart, in the town of Ibiricu, in Egüés. Dedicated to the manufacture of cardboard products, it was founded in 1974 as a family business. But the globalized market meant that it could not escape a general trend that permeated different local groups in the late 1990s that were sold to large multinationals. Thus, in 1999, the San Andrés group, including Videcart, was acquired by the North American company Newark.
The San Andrés group was then formed by a conglomerate of companies dedicated to paper and cardboard. The Newark group was already separated from one of them, Bertako, in the Areta industrial estate, in 2002. And a year and a half ago, in November 2012, the Spanish fund PHI acquired the rest of the group, under the name Abelan, since That was the name of Newark’s European division.
Today Abelan, which is wholly owned by PHI, is made up of three paper mills: San Andrés, in Villava; Catalana, in Tarragona, and Viersen, in Germany. In addition, the Videcart converters, in Ibiricu, are added to the group; Catalana, in Tarragona; Fibor, in Holland (which does the same as Videcart) and ADL (Atelier des Landes), in Brittany. This entire group has a turnover of 140 million euros and employs 600 people.
In turn, Abelan is divided into three branches: North Abelan, South Abelan and Catalan. The Abelan Sur division includes Videcart, San Andrés and ADL. Jorge Beschinsky is general director of Abelan Sur and joint administrator of the entire Abelan group.
Profile
Jorge Beschinsky Cortázar was born in Argentina, in 1965, but his origins, and some surnames, are Russian, French, Navarrese, Italian, German… He lives in Vitoria, along with his wife and two children (aged 8 and 10). Beschinsy has a law degree from the University of Alcalá de Henares, MBA and has professional experience in different multinational companies in different sectors where he has held different general management positions (export, commercial…). When he had already been working in the PHI fund as general director of one of its investees, landed at the San Andrés paper mill in Villava, when PHI bought the paper group from Newark in November 2012.
