The origins of ESIP date back to 1903 when entrepreneur João António Júdice Fialho set up a canned food factory in Lagos, following it a year later with another in Ferragudo fully equipped with a printing process. Around the same time he opened one of the first canned food factories in Peniche and employed a Spanish constructor to build a neighbourhood where all the workers arriving from the Algarve could be housed. Peniche had everything needed for the development of a canned food industry: a sea full of fish, plenty of people looking for work and lots of fishermen. Workers were granted a remarkable set of benefits for the time, including the right to a house, a creche for their children and a health centre. João António Júdice Fialho became one of the most notable figures in the history of the European canned food industry in the first decades of the 20th Century. Marie Elisabeth was the group’s leading brand, responsible for huge volumes of exports to England.
