Our history began in the 1960s with the door-to-door sale of codfish across the streets of downtown Lisbon. João Alves and his father would leave their small grocery store in São Pedro da Cadeira, Torres Vedras, and distribute the people’s “faithful friend”, in other words, codfish.
The codfish business marked him from a very young age and later, one day in 1985, after establishing himself on his own and inspired by the names of his two sons, Ricardo and Bernardo Alves, João Alves incorporated the company that would become a reference in the codfish sector – Riberalves.
At first, Riberalves was a distribution company, a cash & carry business with a significant focus on the food sector. Codfish soon had an important role in its activity, so much that it now offers the renting of codfish dryers.
After the sale of this cash & carry in 1990, João Alves decided to focus exclusively on the selling and processing of codfish, launching Riberalves’ first major investment: the construction of the Carvalhal industrial unit in Torres Vedras, which is the company’s current head office, from which all activity is coordinated.