João Oliveira Cortez, director of Celoplás and former Mechanical Engineering student at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), is the winner of the FEUP 2023 Career Award. The award, now in its sixth edition, aims to recognise the excellence of the career of graduates of the Faculty of Engineering who are a professional reference for their peers and the community, thus contributing to the consolidation of FEUP’s image as a leading school in the field of Engineering.
‘This award, which honours me greatly, will act as another stimulus and a strong vitamin to continue adding value to society and the economy,’ admits this year’s winner.
João Oliveira Cortez succeeds António Mota (2022), Carlos Moreira da Silva (2021), João Serrenho (2020), António Segadães Madeira Tavares (2019) and Luís Valente de Oliveira (2018) as winner of the Career Award.
The 2023 FEUP Career Award ceremony took place on 19 April 2024 in the Prof. Doutor José Marques dos Santos Auditorium at FEUP.
About João de Oliveira Cortez
Born in Nine, in the municipality of V. N. Famalicão, João de Oliveira Cortez (1954) graduated in Mechanical Engineering (Fluids and Heat option) in 1986 from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. That same year, he founded CCL, a company that arose from the need to find an alternative to Portugal’s total dependence on imports of technical engineering components in advanced polymeric materials.
In 1989, he founded Celoplás, today the group’s main company, specialising in the development and production of small and micro technical components for the automotive, electrical and electronic, medical and food sectors, requiring highly specialised employees and high-precision polymer production and processing equipment.
With an industrial unit with a total area of 41,000 square metres and a covered area of 16,500 square metres, located in Grimancelos, in the municipality of Barcelos, Celoplás exports more than 95% of its production to Europe, North America and Asia, with the German market being the main destination, with total sales of more than 30 million euros.
The industrial plant in the three factories has around a hundred injection moulding machines and a team of more than 200 people, 27% of whom are university graduates. Their main activity? Designing, developing and manufacturing – through the injection moulding and micro injection process – more than 200 million high-precision engineering components a year, using more than 2,500 tonnes/year of high-performance polymers. It also develops and produces micro-scale components using micromachining and micromoulding technologies. The company had a turnover of around 32 million euros in 2023