75 years of business culture solutions
In 1946 Don Georgios Lymberopulos arrived in Panama from Greece and started with a small fish business in a popular neighborhood in the capital. In 1955 the young entrepreneur acquired its first fishing boat. By 1962 he managed to acquire a small fleet of vessels and started his own company offering employment to many people. In 1975, he acquired the first purse seine tuna boat called Julie L. Five years later, he built a seafood processing plant in Vacamonte, Panama, where he started to process its own fish and shrimp production and added value to the product line integrating its operations vertically.
In 1997, Marpesca acquired the management operation of the Vacamonte international dock and the international cold storage facility, which by the time was a leading-edge business model in the business and shortly gained an important international position and recognition.
In 2002, Marpesca expanded its operations in Corozal, an area near the Panama Canal, and built a processing plant to increase its production and product line. In addition, it also set up and processing zone for manufacturing companies focused mainly on exports. During this decade, Marpesca expanded its purse seine fleet with the Tunamar and Tunapesca, to a total of 3.
A new decade, in 2010, began with much greater challenges with the acquisition of Marine Shrimp Farm Inc., a 1000-hectare shrimp farm and built the sister process plant in Aguadulce to process its own shrimp production and from neighbor farms. The operations required to better control and produce its own larva for the farm and in 2016, Marpesca purchased an operating laboratory to control the genetical quality of the species and so to the end product. By the time, Marpesca consolidated itself as a growing industry that provided development and work to thousands of workers and their families in the area.
As part of the vertical integration philosophy of the family, in 2013, Pespesca, a tuna loin production plant located in Montecristi, Ecuador was acquired. With this plant, Marpesca was able to expand its product offer to cooked tuna loins for canning and fresh tuna loins for foodservice chains. Furthermore, in 2016, the tuna boat fleet was expanded to 5 vessels with the Pescatun 1 and Sea Tuna and then, Marpesca raised the fish production capacity to 25,000 tons of tuna fish.
70 years later Marpesca began a profound transformation with naming of a new Board of Directors and implementing a Corporate Government. Today, Marpesca is a multinational company ready to face the new challenges of the industry, with an invaluable track record founded by a visionary man who built the foundations of a solid company that today offers with great responsibility the best seafood products possible.