A delicatessen in a Murcian town and a sausage plant.

ElPozo is one of the best-known names on the Spanish charcuterie shelf, and it has never left the town where it began. Spanish and English Wikipedia trace the business to a delicatessen opened in Alhama de Murcia, in the Region of Murcia in south-east Spain, by Antonio Fuertes in 1936. The company, ElPozo Alimentación, counts its own start from 1954, when, it says, industrial production began with its first factory for embutidos, the cured and cooked sausages of Spanish tradition, and its products were sold across the region.

The company’s own timeline then sets out the steps that turned a regional sausage maker into a national meat business. In 1971 it opened its first refrigerated slaughterhouse and cutting room, and began to sell fresh meat alongside its processed products. In 1979 it inaugurated part of the factory that still stands in Alhama de Murcia, which the company describes as the start of its great commercial expansion. In 1980 it ran its first television advertising campaign. In 2019 it marked 65 years of activity, and today it describes itself as having more than 70 years behind it.

ElPozo is still a family business. It sits inside Grupo Fuertes, a holding company that Spanish Wikipedia says also owns the poultry firm Procavi, the winery Bodegas Luzón, Cefusa, the water brand Aquadeus and the Terra Natura parks, among others. Its president, Tomás Fuertes, received Spain’s Gold Medal for Merit at Work in 2011, according to both Wikipedia editions.

One site, a controlled process and a household name.

Where ElPozo is made is unusually clear. The company gives its headquarters and main production site as Alhama de Murcia, on an avenue named after Antonio Fuertes, and it builds its story around what it calls CIP, Control Integral de Proceso, an integrated-process model. “Desde el origen al paladar, todo se controla,” the company says: from origin to palate, everything is controlled.

Spanish Wikipedia puts the workforce at about 5,800 people in 2025; an earlier English Wikipedia snapshot, based on figures for 2017, gave more than 4,600 direct employees and about 23,000 indirect jobs, and ranked ElPozo as the second-largest company in the Region of Murcia by turnover. Grupo Fuertes as a whole says it employs more than 8,700 people across its farming, food and other businesses. The company says its products reach about 80 countries; Spanish Wikipedia gives 82 countries on four continents, and English Wikipedia, in an earlier snapshot, about 75, so the figure depends on the year cited.

At home, ElPozo’s strongest claim is about the shopping basket. According to Kantar Worldpanel’s Brand Footprint study, cited by both Wikipedia editions, ElPozo was in 2018 the brand bought by the most Spanish households for the third year running, and it led its market in regions including Andalusia, Murcia and Extremadura; Spanish Wikipedia adds Castilla-La Mancha and the Canary Islands to that list. The company’s timeline says it already held that household lead in 2016. The company now uses the line “La marca preferida por los hogares españoles,” the brand Spanish households prefer, as a signature on its website.

The range is organised under a handful of sub-brands. Alongside the core ElPozo name the company lists ElPozo 1954, which takes its name from the founding year; ElPozo ExtraTiernos; ElPozo KingUpp; Bienstar; and Legado Ibérico, its Iberian charcuterie line.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all food brands, and all of them come from Spain: Calvo, Isabel, Cola Cao, Nocilla, ElPozo, Campofrío and Pescanova. Spanish food brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a neighbourhood shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal or snack it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its food is actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its food is made and how its packaging and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Futsal, workplace sport and a town brand.

Beyond the supermarket, the ElPozo name is best known through sport. Spanish Wikipedia says the futsal club now called ElPozo Murcia was founded in 1989 with the support of the Murcian food company, which that year bought the league place of the Cruz Joyita club in the new national futsal league, the LNFS; the team kept its place in its first season, 1989/90. The club has carried the company name in its title ever since.

Sport also features in how the company presents itself as an employer. English Wikipedia says that in 2018 ElPozo received the European Sport and Healthy Company award, the first Spanish company to do so, and that it has about 5,000 square metres of sports facilities for its staff. The company’s timeline adds that in 2005 it opened a nursery school for employees’ children up to the age of three.

The family that opened a shop in Alhama de Murcia in 1936 still controls the business through Grupo Fuertes, the factory first inaugurated in 1979 is still on the same site, and the name still appears on a local sports club.

For a design guide, ElPozo shows how a regional family company can turn one town, one founding year and one plain name into a national household brand. Compare Campofrío, the Burgos charcuterie maker that became part of a Mexican food group, and Pescanova, another Spanish protein brand. For this guide we use a cured red, a deep oxblood and a parchment cream with a sturdy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep ElPozo’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.