Amazing time in Bilbao – Logistics and Supply Chain Management’s study tour 2017

Our four day study tour in Bilbao was a blast and I could not have asked for more. Besides visiting interesting companies, we also had good food, good wine, and a birthday celebration!

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Day 1, 23 April 2017

We arrived in Bilbao on Sunday evening. Our group was accompanied by Dr. Hendrik Reefke, Steven Crabb from the Career Service and Larry, an alumnus from our course who is now a lecturer at Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao. It was our free day. Luckily, the sun set very late so we could explore the old town and we managed to take some good pictures of the city. Later on, we had delicious local tapas for dinner. The Spanish omelette was splendid.

Day 2, 24 April 2017

We visited CAF, a train manufacturing company which builds and maintains the trains (high speed, regional and Metro) and trams in Spain and overseas, such as Germany, Czech, Italy. Currently, they are doing a new project in the UK. They showed us their warehouse and explained how they operated.

After that, we had over two hours for a relaxed lunch on the beautiful winery at Eguren Ugarte, Guardia. It also has a hotel, and they also arrange a wedding service here as well. This winery is really famous as I saw pictures decorating the wall of Antonio Banderas, other celebrities and famous chefs from Spain and Italy when they visited. The food was very delicious from the starter, main course (lamb’s rib) to the dessert. Of course, the wine was superb. Then, their staff took us to the storage of wine, described each stage of wine producing before finishing with wine testing. In the evening, my friends and I had a dinner at another nice local restaurant in the city centre of Bilbao.

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Day 3, 25 April 2017

We went to Ternua office, a clothing company who specialise in outdoor and winter outfits. Their employee explained their supply chain strategy to us and we had a chance to explore their collection. In the afternoon, we headed to San Sebastián, a coastal city in Basque Country. During there, we had lunch at a fine local restaurant and celebrated the birthday of our friend, Tony Wu. Some time later, we did some sightseeing around the city.

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Later on, we back to Bilbao to visit the Guggenheim, the famous art museum. It has a lot of beautiful art exhibition. Our last dinner here was also excellent. It seemed that we great in choosing good things!

Day 4, 26 April 2017

On the last day, we explored Eroski’s warehouse, a Spanish supermarket chain with almost 1,000 outlets across Spain. They have a very impressive warehouse with the automatic sorting system and a very large storage space. Before our flight back to England, Larry took us to his workplace, Universidad de Deusto, a 131-year-old university.

I really enjoyed my time in Bilbao. I have to admit that when I chose Bilbao as my first choice for the study tour, I did not expect much. It turned out that it was a perfect study tour with the charm of the city and delicious food and drink. Future Logistics and Supply Chain Management students, if you choose Bilbao, I am sure that you will have a great time here!

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Photo contributed: Amy Pornpatrakul, Roberta Cervone and Sabrina Zhang.