Óscar Lana, CEO of Integralia, comments on the company’s forecasts for 2023. “We are going into the year prepared. Our values are, if possible, more valid than ever,” he says.
There are decades in which nothing happens and years in which decades pass. We have had 36 months of events that could take several lustrums. They have been happening in front of our eyes at an unfathomable pace. During this time at Integralia we have taken our capacity for resilience to unprecedented levels and combined it with our ability to adapt, which is how we have managed to get this far. We are closing 2022 as a tough test that we have passed with flying colours, thanks to the commitment of our team and the capacity of our customers who understand the peculiarities of the geopolitical situation that affects us all. We are going for 2023 with the help of our team and with our values, more valid than ever, in our backpacks.
When at the end of 2019 we all wished each other a happy new year, no one could have imagined that in those first months of 2020 we were going to face an unprecedented crisis. We started with alarming health problems and, in parallel, all the economic consequences emerged. Before we had recovered from that blow to the international economy, in February this year the Russian invasion of Ukraine broke out. We have a war less than 4,000 kilometres from Spain’s borders, disrupting commercial and financial globalisation and rewriting global geopolitical balances.
Although developments encourage us to face the future with optimism, we have not yet seen the peak of the crisis in which we find ourselves, so we must be realistic. The effects are across the board, but the impact on the economy is devastating. At Integralia we are experiencing serious problems with supplies, prices and delivery times. Our day-to-day life has changed a lot compared to three years ago. If the market circumstances are different, our working model has had to adapt, so we have had to leave the sector’s trade fairs to one side and we have been forced to work under very different circumstances. However, we are very grateful to our customers, who continue to place orders with us, and we are very proud of our team, who get up every day to make the deliveries we make.
Right now, many processes involve a delay in deadlines or even a cost adjustment. These processes are very time-consuming. We have been able to cope with them thanks to the people who make up Integralia and those behind our customers’ brands, on both sides. I would like to thank you for understanding the circumstances. We all, as a society, must convince ourselves of the importance now of making longer-term forecasts, of being very cautious about our needs again. Make decisions in advance if we do not want unforeseen events.
History shows that companies that have been able to adapt to circumstances are, in many cases, the ones that have succeeded. We all, as a society, need to rethink our priorities.
We are in this long-distance race right now. We are saying goodbye to a complicated year, in which we have had to adapt to a new and very different environment to the one we were living in a few years ago. In any case, this crisis has brought us an obligation to rethink and redesign our ways of working. And that is what we get up every day to do.
At Integralia we face the new year prepared, we come from a strong training to look for solutions to all the possible occurrences of destiny. Our purpose and values, as well as our strategy are, if possible, more valid than ever. Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2023 to all.