Challenging Economic Rationality? The Location Factors of CIMBOR in Ponte de Sor (1969-1980)

Abstract

At the end of the 1960s, when industrial concentration progressively advanced in Portugal's large urban areas, arubber production plant decided to settle in Ponte de Sor, a small town whose industry was until then dominated by thetransformation of endogenous products. In this article, based on the scarce existing documentation, we seek to identifythe reasons that led CIMBOR to settle in Ponte de Sor. We conclude that Ponte de Sor only had advantages in the cost oflabor and industrial land, so it was not the best site for the company. This fact contributed, at least partially, tothe failure of the enterprise. Thus, the choice for Ponte de Sor was either a bad one, a government decision, ormotivated by cultural and personal factors. In the future, in order to verify these conclusions, research will bereinforced by using, with the proper methods of Oral History, the statements of the former workers as the location ofthe company's archive is unknown.