The engineer from Mirandela has returned to the ground to establish the main center of a new multinational company in the energy sector in the town of Trás-os-Montes, which he hires but cannot find candidates for qualified work.

Manuel Lemos is one of the founders of Enline, who chose Mirandela as the headquarters for the company in Portugal, which has 25 clients on five continents, including national electricity companies from several countries, which use software developed to remotely monitor power lines and equipment.

In Portugal, they tried unsuccessfully to try out the product, but they still have no clients in the country where they now find it difficult to find stakeholders to fill the vacancies they offer.

“We are experiencing tremendous difficulties in finding professionals, mainly for business development, people with experience in international markets who can speak and write English, among other languages,” he told Luce.

The company has already announced competitions and still has “seven or eight vacancies,” which also include professionals with experience in electrical or software engineering, as well as information technology and marketing.

“I think it is very important to publicize the fact that there is an international software company that currently exports 100% of its products worldwide, which is decided by the Trás-os-Montes shareholders, but we need professionals who want come to the salon, “he stressed.

The company has received support from the COESO skilled recruitment program, and its strategic partner is the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB), which has “already helped to hire one person,” and together they are interviewing others.

Manuel Lemos, 37, was born in Mirandela, in the Bragança area, studied engineering in Porto and emigrated to Peru during the 2008 crisis.

He went to work for a German energy, paper and mobility company, and it was there that he met two other foreign engineers with whom he decided to take a chance.

This adventure began in 2018 with the development of software for monitoring equipment and power lines, which is different from what exists on the market in that it does not require equipment or field visits.

They were supported by a business incubator in the European Union and a Portuguese investor, and more recently by the incubator of the Vale do Tua Regional Natural Park.

“This process was difficult, we started in Portugal, where, unfortunately, we were not crowned with success,” he recalled.

They knocked on various European doors, and the Spanish electrical grid was the first to open, followed by Austria, Germany, and now they have clients “in Australia, India, Canada, USA, many Latin American countries, Brazil, Peru, Colombia , Chile, Argentina and Uruguay ”.

The company has offices in Brazil, Peru, Germany, as well as agents and resellers in various countries.

“In Portugal, we are trying to convince various clients such as REN, EDP and others to apply our technologies, but unfortunately nothing has been concluded yet, but we are very optimistic that this can happen this year as well,” he said.

According to the partner, the technology they have developed allows them to anticipate, prevent and correct problems that affect the distribution of energy, namely those that are best known to the general public, such as power outages or fires caused by high voltage lines.

The company has technology that creates a so-called “digital twin” of a network or equipment that can actually read what is happening, “diagnose and inform the customer about potential failures or events, and how to fix them. them before they arise, or at the time when they arise. “

The technology is also designed to increase power, reduce losses by up to 25%, or combat vegetation along lines, as well as fires caused by power lines, through sparks resulting from electrical discharges or short circuits.

The technology is applied on “about two thousand kilometers of lines around the world, official sales began just over a year ago.”

The prospect is “to double this value by the end of the year, and next year to reach the mark of 10 to 15 thousand kilometers and continue to grow.”

Manuel Lemos believes in this growth based on the global market figure of “approximately 100 million kilometers of transmission lines.”

Enline’s turnover is “still small” as it is still “at the stage of developing a pilot project with strategic customers.”

Manuel Lemos predicts they will reach “roughly half a million euros of business” by the end of the year and hopes to “surpass one million” next year with the goal of “reaching five million euros between 2023 and 2024”.