As of: February 1, 2024 3:13 p.m
Manuel Nunez once came to Stade as a guest worker. He now runs a company. Many of its employees also have an immigrant background. However, he is critical of current migration policy.
Manuel Nunez’s path to becoming a successful businessman begins with a journey. It begins in his hometown in northwestern Spain, together with four acquaintances. He tells how it happened more than 50 years ago:
At the age of 15 he started working in a brickworks in Stade
“We chartered a taxi. I think it cost a thousand pesetas back then. Nowadays you can’t even buy a pack of cigarettes from them. My grandfather took me to the main street with the donkey because the route was so bad, the taxi “I didn’t want to drive there. So, with the cardboard suitcase to the main street and from there it went non-stop to Stade.” Here in Lower Saxony, Nunez began a new life as a guest worker in 1963. “I started working in a brickworks here when I was 15.” He earned 65 German marks per week for a twelve-hour day.
Founded the company after training as a chef
The first few years are not easy. He sleeps in a guest worker dormitory with three bunk beds per room. He later trained as a chef and worked in construction. In his mid-30s, he finally founded his own company that handcrafted pipes made of glass fiber reinforced plastic.
Ridiculed by German business partners
But there is a long way to go to achieve today’s success. He has to work hard to earn the respect of many German business partners. “Selling technology in Germany as a Spaniard was very difficult. Opening a restaurant with good paella and a guitar player is certainly easier.” He was always laughed at. A potential business partner made him wait for three hours and then offered him a small stool to sit on. But Manuel Nunez is persistent and becomes successful. His company Kurotec now supplies custom-made pipes to Bayer, BASF and the LNG terminal in Brunsbüttel. He has earned a good reputation through reliability. “We now work worldwide and have customers in Asia, North America, South America and Europe anyway,” says Nunez.
No success possible without migrants
Its employees are just as international as the projects. Around half of the workforce has a migrant background. One of them is Shekeb Tahery. He came to Germany from Afghanistan in 1991. At Kurotec he worked his way up to authorized representative. Without people with a migration background, Kurotec would have no chance of survival, says Tahery. “We would no longer have any production, we would no longer be able to process orders and we would no longer be able to assemble a meter of pipe.”
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“That would be the downfall of Germany and Europe”
Nunez also describes the plans that the radical right discussed at a secret meeting in Potsdam, namely to expel millions of people with a migrant background from Germany, as unrealistic. “Germany couldn’t exist in this form if these workers disappeared. And you can’t just send Germans with a migrant background home.” That would be the downfall of Germany and Europe, he says.
Criticism of migration policy
However, Nunez – despite or perhaps because of his own history – sees an urgent need for improvement in current migration policy. You shouldn’t provide newcomers with a nest, but you should let them work. “If you don’t give these young people jobs, they’ll think stupid things and do things they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise because they have to work.” It should not be made so easy for migrants in Germany to lead a comfortable life without work.
At 74, still available day and night
Such statements can also be explained by Manuel Nunez’s own work ethic. Even at the age of 74, his business partners can reach him day and night. Finally he learned: “If you want to exist in Germany, you have to be at least as good as the best German. Otherwise you have no chance.” This maxim brought him to where he is today.
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Hello Lower Saxony | 02/01/2024 | 19:30 o’clock