Podcast "Pontos por Soldar" | João Carlos Novo, Chairman of Motofil

You can listen the full episode on Spotify, iTunes, Soundcloud or Deezer and watch it on our Youtube channel. Below, you can read the highlights of this conversation.

André Ferreira (AF): How does MOTOFIL - Motores e Fios SA grows to MOTOFIL SA, with delegations in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, equipment spread all over the world. A group that is in the Metalwork industry, in Aeronautics, in the Automotive industry... How did this happen over these 40 years?

João Carlos Novo (JCN): (...) this was the result of a lot of work, some needs and some of our agility and cleverness, essentially from some people that we had in the team, that were able to look to the needs and find solutions for our customers (...) a customer requested a special machine and that was the trigger for us to jump to what Motofil is today (...) we had to be a little creative in the old fashion way, with very rudimentary systems (... ) we started to explore the Iberian market, Portugal and Spain and easily became the biggest player in Portugal for robotics.
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AF: Does robotics replace the human worker?

JCN: No. Robotics came to help our workers, to facilitate tasks. Robots are not going to take any jobs away from anyone, on the opposite, there is a lot of work that used to be done based on physical effort that certainly we, our children, our grandchildren, are not willing to do what our ancestors did and it is obvious that these tasks have to be facilitated. In addition to making our teams, our companies more professional, we make them more competitive with optimization, the robot is part of it.
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AF: Is internationalization very important for Motofil?

JCN: Yes, it is important for Motofil, for any company that wants to grow. Internationalization is not easy, it is a big risk, it takes a lot of courage, a lot of determination (...) it is not something that starts today to be successful tomorrow (...) we were lucky to find the right people, essentially the important thing about all this is the teams that we take out there (...) without money nothing is done, without availability neither. Without sacrifice, then, nothing is done.