Mat Holding is explained by a permanent concern to visualize major changes and the ambition to lead them. "Making things happen, with passion and discretion" would be said to be the hallmark of the house, and above all it is that of Pau Relat, who has been leading the group's growth for thirty years, first from IQV, then as CEO, and since this 2024, as president.
Relat, who is also president of Fira de Barcelona, has been the protagonist of the last True Leaders of this season, the series organized by The New Barcelona Post and EY to learn first-hand about the experiences and learnings of business leaders who have built great success stories in our country. This is the Mat Holding Case explained by Pau Relat.
Mat Holding is today a group that develops solutions and technologies for the efficient and sustainable management of agriculture and water. It is a global leader in the manufacture and commercialization of copper salts for agriculture, water conduction and control systems for the agricultural and industrial sectors, and the distribution of irrigation products in Spain and Portugal. With more than 1,100 employees, 17 subsidiaries, and commercial presence in more than 140 countries, the group announced this year that it is accelerating its growth plan with a record investment of 60 million to acquire strategic productive assets during 2024. The goal is to exceed 500 million in turnover within five years.
The group was born, like so many other family businesses, to solve a need: the Matosas family had vineyards planted in Mollet, they needed copper salts to treat them and, not finding them, they decided to manufacture them. This is how Industrias Químicas del Vallés began in 1935. The same concern led the shareholders to Israel in the 70s, to learn about the innovative water utilization systems for agriculture, and in 1980 they created Regaber, a company specialized in drip irrigation solutions, and which is another of the group's pillars.
Relat joined in November 1994, almost 30 years ago. A pharmacist by tradition and vocation, he wanted to dedicate himself to industrial organization, and after an MBA at IESE and a brief stint at a German multinational, he joined IQV. Back then, the industry was a very uncool sector, he recalls: his master's classmates preferred to dedicate themselves to finance and M&A operations. "IQV was the typical Catalan company with a production vocation but not a commercial one. The company suffered a crisis, was close to bankruptcy, and we began a significant transformation process," he explains: "Being industrial is very powerful, but you must be very close to the final market. If not, you stop being the master of your destiny." This was a change that has marked the group's strategic vision and remains to this day.
In 2004, the Mat Holding structure was created and Relat became its CEO, coinciding with the incorporation of the third generation of the owning family into the board. Pau Relat points out the importance of the moment when a family business (which seeks the employability of the family) transitions to a family shareholder company, "which seeks the legacy in the medium and long term, and that means looking for the best professional, whether or not they are from the family, to do it." Easy to say, harder to achieve.
"No two family businesses are alike, recipes don't work. The family business has unique characteristics: it has the same problems and advantages as a company and a family. Only the company that can bring out the best of both worlds can survive." And how is this achieved? Governance is the key, says Relat. "Incorporating independent directors who help to objectify issues that in the family business are in the realm of emotions." At Mat Holding, they already professionalized the board by incorporating independent directors in the late nineties. "Independent means that they do not depend economically on that position and that they have their own criteria. Precisely for this reason they can say certain things, making the owning family more receptive, and also help the CEO in the professionalization process." "There are decisions that are transformational for the future of a company. And in our case, the family has made the right decisions."
Talking about achievements does not mean ignoring failures. "At Mat we have made many mistakes, because we do many things," says Pau Relat to explain one of the traits of the group's corporate culture: "Rather, not taking risks, not thinking big, is penalized. And yes: we learn quickly, so as not to repeat the same mistake twice." He considers himself a "balance sheet obsessive: most managers focus too much on the income statement," and in that long view he sees no obstacles, at least financial: "When analyzing operations, the first thing is the project. If the project makes sense, we already find a way to carry it out. A task of the executive is to modulate the speed of growth to the shareholder's risk aversion."
He considers himself a "balance sheet obsessive: most managers focus too much on the income statement," and in that long view he sees no obstacles, at least financialThe key to Mat's business success, insists Relat, has been and is to be masters of their own destiny: "When we suffered the chemical crisis, we realized that we had been turning our backs on the market for years and had not seen the changes coming. It was then that we understood that we had to be global." This means selling and producing wherever possible and capitalizing as much as possible on the knowledge of the value chain. This path is aimed at becoming world leaders in the sectors in which it operates. In the last ten years, Mat Holding has made a dozen acquisitions, both in the agricultural and water sectors.The group's turnover has tripled in a decade. The playing field is the world, and whoever has and plays the ball better wins, although global geopolitics doesn't make it easy: "If you don't have teams aligned in values, resilient, and prepared to manage uncertainty, you won't get ahead."
"That's why we are constantly visualizing: we anticipate and invest to be able to lead new trends." A growth strategy like this can only be carried out with a firm long-term vision. "At Mat, we made a strategic plan in 2007, and since then we update it, but we don't redo it. Risk management is intrinsic to the business. Companies that often have to change their strategic plans perhaps don't know where they're going," he says (and more than one among the audience raises their eyebrows and starts to think).
"Mat Holding operates in sectors that are key to the world's challenges in the next thirty years. We do crop protection and efficient water management, and this has an impact on how we guarantee food for humanity, how we produce more with less, how we make more efficient use of a scarce resource like water." One of the group's current challenges is to be a global benchmark in digital farming, incorporating the latest technologies at the service of agriculture.
Sustainability, which is so often used and abused, is an implicit concept in the company's purpose, but Pau Relat insists that "the Catalan family business has always been responsible with the environment, with the territory, and with people: it carries it in its DNA: committed, but without making noise."
His other life at Fira de Barcelona
Despite this business trajectory, Relat is much better known for his position as president of Fira de Barcelona, which he assumed in December 2018. "The world changes fast and we need to think medium and long term. But at the public level there is no capacity for long-term vision, and there is a lack of courage and leadership." That is why he defends the work that Fira de Barcelona does. "It is a good example of public-private collaboration, with a governance model that in its strategic definition gives weight to the private sector ---thus allowing for medium and long-term plans--- and lets the executive team execute. This allows the organized fairs to be not an end in themselves, but the means to create legacy, which is to attract talent, business headquarters and, ultimately, transform the country's economic model in the next ten or fifteen years."
Relat is a great defender of Barcelona: "The city historically suffers from low self-esteem. But when you travel the world you realize that being from Barcelona is an immeasurable asset: we must build on that." Very critical when it comes to it, he has a deep-rooted vocation for public service when he claims that "a great strategic plan for the country is necessary to face the drought. It doesn't matter if five drops or twenty-five fall if after four days we forget about it. We already know that a drought will come again and we must put in place the necessary infrastructure to not suffer its consequences again." Pau Relat's strategic vision, whether applied to business, city or country, shares a clear recipe: long-term vision and ambition, commitment and coherence, risk management and courage.