SEL - Salsicharia Estremocense

"It started because of the need for a couple to earn money," says Francisco Arvana, founder of SEL - Salsicharia Estremocense, located in Estremoz, in the Évora district of Alentejo.
The adventure dates back to 1980. "There was a man over 80 who had a sausage shop in Estremoz and had a stall in the square," he says. "He was planning to end the business because he was going to retire, and I applied for that little stall and the little sausage shop he had, 50 square meters." He bought the space and began a new course in his life.
The business of SEL evolved until the country entered the European Economic Community in 1986. "With the entry into the European Economic Community had to be a radical change because, in the eyes of today, you do not even want to know how the meat was worked, formerly in Portugal! It was a wilderness. It was unthinkable to do today, what was done thirty years ago," comments Francisco Arvana alluding to the hygiene conditions of the time.
The absence of a marketing strategy used for the dissemination of SEL products was a hiatus that had to be solved. "So, I have a situation where our products have to be wanted, they have to be desired by the consumer. We did studies so that the seasonings could please a wider range of people and, in order not to abandon the traditional and fall into the temptation of the industrialist, we started to go to international fairs." The trips to these shows outside Portugal have become, since these times, a must for the company.
Although the machines are part of the present, the founder of SEL does not abdicate the traditional side of this craft seized through the teachings of the father, butcher in the abattoir of Estremoz. In this condition, he went on the weekend in the 1960s, slaughtered pigs and took his son to teach him how to kill. "While young people go learn at university, I have learned through life," he concludes. Francisco Arvana doesn’t, however, dispense with scientific knowledge, since he considers that it complements empirical knowledge and vice versa.
As far as the raw material is concerned, the pork from Alentejo has been king and owner of SEL sausages since 1992. The preference lies in the non-intensive creation of this animal fed, this time, acorn. "It's the best product there is!" Be in the sausages, be it in the ham.
On the latter, the mentor of Salsicharia Estremocense ensures that it is a national product: "It is our original, but we went to drink a lot in Spain", the country where the amount of production is bigger and commercial area stronger. Even so, Francisco Arvana does not give up. "SEL will always stand out for difference and quality," he says. Without forgetting the certifications nor the ISO standard, whose objective is to improve the quality of products and services.