Josep Tejedo is set to take over from Montserrat Gil de Bernabé as Mercabarna Managing Director at the end of February. Ms Gil de Bernabé is stepping down after four years in the post.

Around 260 representatives of wholesale markets from 23 countries attended the World Union of Wholesale Markets (WUWM) conference held in China from 18 to 21 October.

Within the group of Central Fish Market products considered top-range, i.e., those that sell for more than €15/kg, it has been found that more of them have seen their prices fall than rise so far this year.

Sònia Recasens was appointed the new chair of Mercabarna at the company’s Board of Directors meeting on 3 November. Ms Recasens, who succeeds Jordi William Carnes, is the deputy mayor of Barcelona for Economics, Enterprise and Employment.

With the crisis, late payments have become one of the biggest headaches for businesses. Pere Brachfield (www.perebrachfield.com) has been studying this problem and teaching people how to handle defaulters for over 20 years, working with different universities and business schools. He is also the director of the Centre for Default Studies and has written more books on this topic than anyone else in the world. Mr Brachfield gave a course on bad debtors at the Mercabarna Training Area in November.

This is the name of the campaign for schoolchildren that Mercabarna management, the Wholesale Businesses’ Association (AEM) and the Rosa Valls-formació School have implemented. The goal is to encourage the boys and girls taking part to discover the world of flowers and plants, and to raise awareness of the emotional-wellbeing benefits they can bring and their importance with regard to the environment.

The Central Fruit and Vegetable Market’s mushrooms campaign has got off to the worst start in the past five years. The lack of rain and the high temperatures recorded in September and October led to a mushroom shortage in a season when mushrooms play an important role at the Market.

An exhibition entitled “The Fish of Mercabarna” is set to open in the lobby of the Management Centre on 15 December. The exhibition will feature the laminate sheets created by the artist and director of the Capellades Paper Mill Museum, Victoria Rabal, with images of the fish that arrive at the Central Fish Market each day.

The Mercabarna-flor Wholesale Businesses Association (AEM) collaborated once again this year in International Day of Older Persons, held on 1 October. The collaboration consisted of donating 2,000 carnations which were distributed to passing senior citizens during a solidarity march through the centre of Barcelona. More than 150 people including volunteers, partners and collaborators of Amics de la Gent Gran (Friends of Senior Citizens) took part.

The second “Grow with Fish” campaign kicked off in late September with the goal of repeating the success of last year’s campaign. This time around, all the open days for visits have been filled and it is expected that more than 5,000 students from 100 Catalan schools will take part in the initiative, promoted by the Fish Wholesalers’ Association (GMP) in collaboration with Mercabarna, designed to promote knowledge about and the consumption of fishery produce among children.