Mafra’s Sicasal Collapse Freezes 260 Jobs and Threatens Portugal’s Barbecue Season

Portugal’s barbecue season could be missing a familiar flavour. The Mafra-based meat producer Sicasal, once a fixture on supermarket shelves from Bragança to Faro, has been declared insolvent after months of stalled production and failed debt talks. Hundreds of jobs, a regional supply chain and a slice of the country’s food-industry heritage now hinge on what happens between today and the creditors’ showdown scheduled for 4 March.

Quick glance at what is at stake

• 260 direct jobs have been frozen, with pay cheques in limbo

• Lisbon West Court named Jorge Calvete to steer the insolvency

• Banco Comercial Português (BCP) triggered the process as lead creditor

• Production lines in Mafra have been silent since late summer 2025

• A recovery blueprint is promised but details remain sealed until March

A sudden stop in Mafra’s industrial heartland

Drivers on the A21 no longer catch the usual whiff of smoked chouriço coming from Sicasal’s sprawling plant. Workers say the last pallets rolled out in early September, when mounting cash-flow pressures forced management to pull the plug on the ovens. The company’s shutdown is more than a corporate story—Sicasal ranks among the largest private employers in the Mafra–Sintra corridor, rivalling the local dairy and pottery clusters. Without a restart, the municipality faces a spike in unemployment, a dip in municipal tax revenue and knock-on effects on small transporters, butchers and feed suppliers.

How did a €100 M brand run out of steam?

The trouble did not begin this winter. Insiders trace a chain of blows:

• a 2011 blaze that wiped out part of the factory

• costly €15 M rebuilds financed largely with short-term credit

• an increasingly competitive export market where Spanish and German giants under-priced Sicasal in large supermarket tenders

• pandemic-era disruptions that drained working capital

• and, finally, a failed Processo Especial de Revitalização (PER), Portugal’s fast-track rescue tool, rejected because of missing documentation.By the end of 2023 the company was posting €69.7 M turnover but nursing cumulated €12 M in losses, leaving banks uneasy and suppliers demanding cash up front.

The people behind the numbers

On payslips Sicasal’s workforce slid from 315 in 2024 to 260 in 2025, yet many still show up daily to guard equipment or handle frozen stock. "If the lines fire up again, we can be selling in a week," one shift supervisor told Lusa. For families in nearby villages such as Venda do Pinheiro and Ericeira, the plant’s stoppage translates into cancelled childcare, delayed mortgages and a scramble for seasonal jobs in tourism.

4 March: the make-or-break date

Portuguese insolvency law gives creditors three options: liquidate, approve a recovery plan, or hand the keys to a third party. The meeting on 4 March will reveal which path BCP and dozens of smaller creditors—ranging from livestock farmers to carton-box makers—prefer. Any plan must win a two-thirds majority of voting debt and be ratified by the same Sintra court that nixed the earlier PER. Insolvency administrator Jorge Calvete hints he has “more than one” proposal on the table, but confidentiality rules keep names and numbers under wraps.

Who might rescue the brand?

Market chatter points to:

a Portuguese agri-food conglomerate keen on capacity near Lisbon’s ports;

a Spanish meat group eyeing Iberian expansion; and

a private-equity fund attracted by real-estate value on the 14-hectare site.No bids are public, yet industry analysts say a restart would cost €8-10 M—affordable compared with building a similar facility from scratch.

What it means for Portugal’s food sector

The collapse is a wake-up call for an industry built on thin margins, ageing plants and heavy bank leverage. While 2025 exports of pork and processed meats hit €1.2 B, margins averaged barely 3 %. Economists warn that without fresh CAPEX and modern governance, other mid-sized processors could face the same fate when interest-rate holidays end.

The road ahead

For now, locals watch the empty car park on the EN9 and hope the lights will switch back on before Easter grilling season. Should a viable plan emerge—and the ovens reignite—Sicasal’s case could join the short list of Portuguese industrial turnarounds that actually stick. If not, the company that started as Álvaro Santos Silva’s backyard butchery in 1968 may finish as a cautionary tale about waiting too long to fix the books.