Gonçalo Tavares: dealer, business partner and friend in Portugal

If you have been following us for a while, you might have come across him here. Gonçalo; dealer, business partner and friend in Portugal. Let’s introduce him!

Gonçalo Tavares, 43 years old, currently living in Quarteira (in the Algarve region), but originally from Afife, in the Minho region. The love for the warm and drier weather was enough to make him come from the top north to the top south of Portugal.

Gonçalo always wanted to be a vet but then, with a destiny twist, he ended up studying Forestry. Three years after finishing his forestry degree, he entered the ISCTE Business Management Master. Shortly after finishing his forestry degree, he started working at a Portuguese dealer for agriculture and irrigation and he learned a lot. “In fact, these lessons and the Business Management master were the base for my future entrepreneur life”, Gonçalo adds.

Back in 2013, with a friend business partner, Gonçalo started a company that represented NPI in Portugal and was the base for keag, which was officially born in 2019. Keag’s core business is to represent and distribute the best agricultural irrigation brands in the Portuguese market and abroad. One of these high-quality brands is NPI, with its top of the line water storage solutions.  

Five years after working with NPI, and with 15 years of experience working with water storage, Gonçalo had the opportunity to assist NPI at an exhibition in Bangkok and that is when NPI International began to take form. Gonçalo explains: “since NPI’s presence in Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries was smaller than it should be, I gladly accepted the challenge of promoting and increasing NPI’s presence in these markets.”

To do that, we have created NPI International: a shared company between keag and NPI in the Netherlands, in 2021. NPI International aims to develop NPI’s solutions and visibility in the Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries, as well as to provide proximity assistance to the Portuguese and Spanish local markets. “NPI International is in its second year of activity and the results achieved so far are promising”, Gonçalo tells.

“Considering the Portuguese and Spanish markets I would say that the primary challenge lies in countering the perception that cheaper alternatives equate to superior quality. In our water storage solutions we never compromise on quality, and this is what has sustained our presence in the market for over 65 years!”

Header photo: Gonçalo is member of the Quarteira bike team. Whenever our colleague Arjen is in Portugal he joins this group of dedicated bikers. Keag and NPI International are proud sponsors of the Quarteira bike team!