Arcadia Spain

On November 9th, our International Finance course had an embedded study at Fàbrica DAMM at El Prat de Llobregat, in Barcelona.

The beer industry has been very important to the Spanish economy, producing 6,000 direct jobs in agricultura, but also it has a big impact in our tourism and hostelry (bars, restaurants, and cafes).

Estrella DAMM is considered the “catalan” beer.  For this reason, DAMM  is the Futbol Club Barcelona oficial sponsor, and it has sponsored the 1992 Olympic Games (Barcelona), Woody Allen´s movie “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, and Barcelona World Race, among others.

During the visit we learned about the company´s history, elaboration process, and internationalization strategies. This beer is sold in more than 70 countries, being US and UK the most important markets outside Spain.  So Estrella DAMM has to deal with exchange rate risk (our main topic), having operations with different currencies all over the world. 

We also visited the facilities learning about the bottling process, and had a beer tasting at the end of the tour.  At the tasting, we learned about the different products, for example we had the opportunity to try the “Indedit” beer, made with Ferran Adriá´s collaboration (el Bulli´s chef, the best restaurant in the world for 5 years).  It was an interesting, but at the same time funny experience.