Llerena

About

Llerena is the place where you will try some of Extremadura's best food: roasted meats, creamy Torta del Casar cheese and the finest jamón. It is the place where you will meet with old and new friends.

Story

It all started when Florencio Torres Cano, who moved to Salvaleón a la Parra with his wife and kids in 1939, bought the “Los Naranjos” country house and started the livestock activity we keep developing nowadays.

The country houses from Extremadura were small production centres that were mainly self-employed. They grew and produced vegetables, fruits, olives, figs, acorns, milk, etc. You could find fowls such as ducks, chickens and turkeys. They also had merino sheep, dairy cattle and Iberico pigs. Pigs, calves, lambs and wool were sold and, with that money, other products were purchased. The pork cured products obtained from the slaughter would feed families throughout the whole year.

In 1991, the founding partner’s children and grandchildren created an agrarian society called S.A.T. el MESTO. It currently exploits 350 hectares of property - almost entirely Dehesa -, which have organic pig and cattle feedlots and farms. In 2007, we developed, in one of said farms, a photovoltaic solar power plant with over 1,8 Mw of power. Nowadays, S.A.T. el Mesto has 19 members of the Torres family as partners, ranging from the second to the fourth generation.

Some of those partners, who have experience in industry and have been led by Florencio Torres Lagar - my father -, founded in 2000 the company Jamón & Health. All these partners had already worked for societies from this sector, such as Monte Porrino, Japasur or Torres de Briz.

Jamón & Health is a family business and 85% of the capital belongs to the Torres family. The company specializes in slaughter and production of Iberico pork products, especially from acorn-fed pigs. This company has an annual turnover of around 6 million euros and, only last year, 30,000 pigs were slaughtered. Jamón & Health has slaughterhouses, quartering rooms, cold meat factories and ham-curing facilities. All in all, the cellars have storage capacity for 300,000 hams and shoulders.

Five years ago, a franchise of 20 shops around Spain was founded. We now want to take this project to London, where we will try to start our franchise based on our acorn-fed ham and Iberico pork products. We will also offer many other products from Extremadura, such as wine and cheese that come from companies with which Jamón & Health keep a very good relationship.

In terms of investigation and development, the company of the Torres Corporation has developed several projects:
- SAT el Mesto: feeding techniques for the pig in the dehesa.
- Jamón & Health: processes to eliminate mites in ham.
- Jamón & Health: development of new products, such as loinham and loinshoulder, in collaboration with universities and research centres from Spain and Italy.