Portugal: Seventy textile workers at factory supplying Sonae Group unemployed following insolvency

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"Textile company sold by Sonae on the brink of the pandemic has gone bankrupt and left 70 people unemployed", 19 February 2025
In January 2020, two months before the Covid-19 pandemic took Portugal by storm, businessman Andreas Falley...acquired Temasa - Têxtil do Marco from the Sonae group, located in Marco de Canaveses...
Its main client was Zippy, a Sonae brand, but it was also responsible for producing school uniforms for Colégio Efanor (also owned by Sonae), as well as workwear for employees at Worten, Bagga MO and Zippy shops, among others.
When it was bought by Falley, Temasa had a workforce of around 80 people and a turnover of around half a dozen million euros, around 20 per cent of which came from foreign markets.
17 February 2025: the 70 or so workers are informed by email that the company is going to file for insolvency...
The following day, the workers received a new communication from the company, also by email, in which Temasa's management explained that ‘at the moment, there are no orders that justify keeping the company in business’, and that it was therefore ‘exempting all employees from reporting to work, maintaining all rights until insolvency is declared’.
In a statement to the newspaper ‘A Verdade’, the workers [spoke] of the ‘bad atmosphere’ that began ‘about two years ago’, with ‘humiliation, overload of duties, unfounded indisciplinary proceedings, people suffering from depression due to psychological pressure, all with the aim of saturating the employees and them making the decision to quit, as some of their colleagues did. We are currently owed salaries and the 2024 Christmas bonus,’ they told the same publication.
According to the Marco de Canaveses newspaper, the workers have been standing outside the company since 17 February waiting for answers about its future.
Negócios tried to contact the company, but Temasa remained silent.
[Translation via DeepL]