Pretecor, a company with history and vision

Origin In the late 1980s, the Santander Coffee Growers Committee came up with the idea of creating a company to manufacture poles to support electrical networks. The coffee growers had a vision of the future that was motivated by their strong Corporate Social Responsibility, and they wanted to support the coffee growing areas of the department through the development of its electrical infrastructure.

This is how Pretecor was born on November 22, 1982, through the investment of visionary entrepreneurs such as the National Federation of Coffee Growers, through its Departmental Committees of Santander and Norte de Santander, and the Corporación Financiera del Oriente S.A.

Its first production plant was located in the municipality of Piedecuesta and that is where the history of a company that has become a reference in the national electrical sector and in some countries of the region began, with a vision of the future in infrastructure innovations for an increasingly international market.

Evolution
Pretecor was a pioneer in Colombia in the manufacture of concrete poles with prestressing technology, which uses high-strength steel and concrete, making the poles more durable, lower weight and more reliable.

Its initial market was the Santander region, but it quickly expanded to the entire country, thanks to the combination of the technical attributes of the product and the company's reliability, which have demonstrated our quality, trust and support to our customers.

Concrete poles have evolved and have become larger and stronger. Pretecor has managed to produce poles more than 50 meters high with breaking loads of more than 8000 kgf, being the only company in Colombia with the capacity to manufacture them and one of the few companies with this capability in Latin America. The line of action of concrete poles has expanded to support 115 kV transmission lines, lighting masts and telecommunication antennas.

For the Oil & Gas sector, Pretecor developed a prestressed concrete coating system for oil and gas pipelines that has been installed along more than 100,000 meters in several regions of the country.

In addition, in response to the country's need to bring electricity to the most remote and difficult-to-access regions, Pretecor has incorporated new materials for the supporting structures of electrical and lighting networks. Fiberglass reinforced polyester poles have become an excellent alternative due to their exceptionally low weight and high strength. These poles weigh only 10% of their concrete counterparts and their superior durability and resistance to the elements make them a very practical option for any environment, avoiding problems such as the corrosion suffered by metal structures. Many communities in remote regions are grateful for this alternative and have benefited from the arrival of electricity.

Like concrete poles, Pretecor fiberglass poles have also evolved to become architectural elements for urban landscape development. The concept of the pole changed from being an element that clashes with the environment, to an element that coexists with it, that contributes to give it life and color or, on the contrary, that can be camouflaged in it.

More than 2 million Pretecor poles installed in Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Chile, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic have contributed to improving the quality of life of many Latin American families by bringing them electricity, telecommunications and the Internet, as well as the safety and friendliness provided by well-lit and well-designed urban environments.

Vision for the Future
Our corporate philosophy stands out for its high quality, constant innovation and permanent support. We love our products and care about understanding the needs of our environment and our customers. This philosophy, combined with our corporate values of respect, integrity and excellence, allows us to guide our company into the future.

And Pretecor's future will be increasingly international and increasingly diversified. We are developing and integrating technologies for the electrical, telecommunications, construction and urban planning, roads and civil works, and industry and oil sectors.

Pretecor is working hard on the development of ecosystems for smart cities, cities that plan and direct their actions towards sustainability and inclusion, and that connect and adapt to the challenges and expectations of the people who inhabit them in order to ensure the common welfare, cities that include technology as part of the answer to their problems and as a generator of quality of life.

Based on this premise, Pretecor has been developing ecosystems based on smart poles that integrate various Industry 4.0 technologies.

Decorative smart poles that create iconic urban spaces such as the Forest of Lights installed in the Cabecera neighborhood of the city of Bucaramanga and informational poles that interact with people and provide information of interest from various sources such as sensors or control centers.

In addition, we know that strategic alliances with companies that share our philosophy and our vision of the future are essential to making even more significant advances. This is how, in an alliance with Santander-based company K2 Ingeniería, we have developed the Polget environmental smart pole that monitors the city in terms of variables such as noise, particulate matter, gases and meteorological variables, integrating with an information system and providing inhabitants with information in real time.

This alliance will lead to further developments in the near future, aimed at the environment, risk management, smart mobility, creating productive and competitive environments, citizen culture, security, health, leisure and digital government.

We are also permanently working for all our products and developments to reach more countries, not only in Latin America but also in the rest of the world. In the short term we expect to be in Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador and not long after in places as far away as the United Arab Emirates.

We have continued working to support the infrastructure to bring the modern world to more people, to connect cities and territories with people, and to bring the engineering and drive of Santander to the rest of the world.