All attributes which sum up SECIL's philosophy, enabling it to enjoy the trust of its customers and serving as the foundation for its commitment to building the future.

Those same attributes have enabled SECIL to maintain an excellent balance between its different areas of responsibility: customer satisfaction, the company's own economics, rewarding its workforce, and contributing to the welfare of the communities in which it works.

Through quality, tradition and innovation, SECIL seeks to rise to the massive challenge of sustained development in a modern society, conciliating the creation of socially useful wealth and the preservation of natural resources for future generations.

The company launched itself on the international stage in 2000, with the acquisition of Société des Ciments de Gabès in Tunisia, which owns a cement plant with an annual capacity of more than 1 million tonnes, and a share in the Tunisian market of approximately 17%.

SECIL manufactures and markets grey and white cement through an organizational and functionally integrated structure, guaranteeing the quality of the products leaving its three plants. The company also operates a Customer Service and Cement Distribution Unit for the Portuguese market.

Having started out manufacturing cement, SECIL's first venture into another sector was into that of ready-made concrete. A natural move, it is now the company's second most important area in terms of investment, turnover and job-creation.

Through its holding company, Secil - Betões e Inertes, SGPS, SECIL now controls various companies in the concrete and aggregates industry. These companies are regionally based, providing major coverage of the Portuguese market as a whole.

SECIL's commitment to quality has also paid-off in this sector. Its renowned standards have been rewarded by way of orders for high-profile construction projects, such as the Railway Bridge over the River Douro, the Vasco da Gama Bridge, as well as for many of the buildings and facilities for Expo '98.

Through its subsidiary, Secil Martingança, SECIL introduced ready-mixed dry mortars to Portugal in 1992. These mortars are especially formulated for mechanical projection and are suitable for both indoor and outdoor applications. First marketed in bags on pallets, these mortars are now sold in bulk too.

The success of these new products and their rapid growth on the market led the company to build a new plant. It is designed exclusively to produce dry mortars, and boasts an annual production capacity of 250,000 tonnes. Secil Martingança also produces and markets hydraulic lime.