Cargill raises investment in Brazil

Packed by increases in revenue and profit in Brazil in 2014, the American Cargill, the world's largest agribusiness firm, accelerates the pace to complete in 2015, a plan of investments of r $ 1.2 billion that tends to strengthen the local subsidiary as one of its main sources of results among the nearly 70 countries in which maintains direct operations.
Triggered at the beginning of 2014, the biennial plan, accounted for $ 640 million contributions until December. There are, therefore, $ 560 million, which are being applied in different business fronts and also will mark the celebrations of 50 years of the company's activities in the country. Founded in 1865 in Conover, Iowa, by William Wallace Cargill, the multi arrived in Brazil in 1965.
Without publicly traded on a stock exchange and controlled by a group of about 100 family members of Cargill and MacMillian, descendants of the Patriarch W.W. Cargill shows no signs of wishing to move in any of the basic pillars in 150 years subsided as global leader of an increasingly competitive sector, especially from the recent advancement of Asian trading companies increasingly geared to agricultural products.
In this sense, gain strength company's investments to optimize the disposal of products originating in Brazil bound for foreign markets, such as the expansion of the Santarém port terminal and the deployment of a transshipment station in Miritituba. The projects developed in Pará are receiving injections of $ 240 million and $ 200 million, respectively.
With capacity to transport 2 million tons of grain per year, the terminal of Santarém is being expanded to 5 million. The work commenced in may 2014 and should be completed in the third quarter of this year. Part of the increase in the projected volume will reach inland waterway terminal thanks to Miritituba station, which received installation license in November and is expected to be ready in 2016.
"The competition is fierce and the quest for efficiency must be constant and differentiated. Are large companies in the dispute, and producers and consumers get for it, "says Luis Pretti, President of Cargill in Brazil. The Executive is in the company since 2005, when he became the first Brazilian Financial Director of the subsidiary, and today is also a member of the World Committee of risk of the company, whose headquarters is a long time in Minneapolis, in the u.s. State of Minnesota.
In the midst of a race driven by contributions in logistics and also defined by "good fight" in the various agricultural products origination moved around by the company-especially grain-and the need to raise margins by selling higher value-added products, Pretti does not hide his satisfaction with the results achieved by the Brazilian operation in 2014.
As recently completed balance sheet, net of Cargill in Brazil reached r $ 26.2 billion last year, 5.6 percent more than in 2013, while net profit grew 26% in the comparison expressive, to $ 481 million. These results helped multi closure the first nine months of its current financial year, on 28 February, with consolidated global sales of $ 92 billion and total net income of $ 1.6 billion, 13% higher than in the same range from the previous year.
The higher levels of the international prices of grain in the first half of last year contributed to the elevation of multi-industry recipe in Brazil in 2014, while the subsequent falling prices benefited processing margins of products such as soybeans and corn. "But the numbers also show that our investments are bearing fruit," says Pretti.
In addition to the contributions in logistics in Pará, the President of the Brazilian subsidiary stresses being applied r $ 240 million in the expansion of soybean processing unit of Três Lagoas in Mato Grosso do Sul, and remember that plant expansions were completed of Mairinque, São Paulo, and Itumbiara, Goiás, which strengthened the special vegetable oils offer of the company. These oils are sold in the country with the brands Liza, Mazola and Purilev.
In the list of Pretti also are about $ 450 million employees in the first biorefinery Cargill corn processing in the country, opened in 2014, and magnification, for $ 15 million, the capacity of the line from citric acid factory of Uberlândia, in Minas Gerais. Citric acid is supplied to customers in the food, beverages and cleaning products, among others.
Two other important initiatives of the company won way last year: the first was the creation of Alvean sugar trading, joint venture divided in equal parts with Copersucar; the other was the establishment of the SJC Bioenergy, in partnership with the USJ, which is developing a $ 160 million project for ethanol production from corn in Quirinópolis in Goiás. In SJC, Cargill and USJ have stakes of 15 percent each and the remaining 70% are in the hands of Finep.
Among the many projects that are part of the biennial plan Cargill's investment in Brazil, which has required less injections is considered one of the most strategic. According to Solange Fernandez, controller of the multinational in Latin America, with the shared service center located in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, the company is focusing on four major functions in Brazil: financial, procurement, Informatics and human resources.
"The goal is to improve our processes and gain efficiency," says Solange, who is 29 years at Cargill and was the first woman to work in the financial area of the company in Brazil. Already work in mining centre approximately 100 employees, a number that is expected to grow to 250 by the end of 2015. And this optimization gains weight in times of falling prices of major commodities by the company and the bustling many uncertainties surrounding the Brazilian economy.
The effects of this situation more adverse already began to appear. According to data from the Bureau of foreign trade (Secex/Mdic), Cargill exports from Brazil earned $ 791,3 million in the first quarter of this year, 20.5 percent less than in the same range of 2014. Part of that fall will be compensated by the increase in grain volumes shipped, since from January to March, the availability of soybeans was lower because of a delay in the harvest and the Teamsters ' strike in February also hurt the flow of runoff. But, on the other hand, nothing indicates that prices will rise significantly over the next few months.
Pretti also recognizes that the consumption of more sophisticated products in domestic retail is no longer the same, a trend that was not observed in 2014. But, according to him, the scene is not so serious to the point of reducing the importance of Brazil in the global Board of American multinational.