MWV Rigesa strengthens presence in Brazil

The second largest manufacturer of corrugated boxes in the country, the MWV Rigesa reinforced their bets in the Brazilian market. The company, American MeadWestvaco Corporation group, opened a little over a year ago its fifth packaging factory, invested almost r $ 1 billion to regain self-reliance in roles and already studying new projects. "The focus is on emerging countries," said the Vice-President of the corrugated business of MWV Rigesa, Paul Iserhard.
The movement in Brazilian corrugated box industry has been great over the past 12 months. In addition to the investments carried out by the company, Klabin, Brazilian largest producer of corrugated packaging, announced expansion projects in packaging papers and International Paper (IP), the world leader, has just arrived to that market in the country, with investments of r $ 950 million in a joint venture with Grupo Orsa.
The low demand per capita vis-à-vis developed countries-which indicates that there is significant potential for expansion-and the increased demand for consumer goods, especially with the rapid growth of the Brazilian middle class, promising to boost the business sector in the coming years, on the evaluation of Iserhard. The MWV Rigesa projects growth of 3.5% per annum for the national market of corrugated board in the medium term, the accelerated pace seen in the last two years.
To keep up with this pace, the MWV Rigesa, employing 3 million people in the country, has just put into operation an expansion project of almost $ 1 billion in Três Barras (SC), who returned to the company to self-sufficiency in packaging papers. "The expansion is in learning curve and there is still a need for additional equipment to get to full capacity," he says, adding that the project doubles the production capacity of paper.
Without revealing other numbers, Iserhard said that the representative of Brazil in the global business of MeadWestvaco tends to grow from the investment in Três Barras. Today, from 12% to 13% of the Group's revenues come from the country. Last year, the total sales of the Corporation amounted to $ 5.46 billion. "Among the emerging markets, China and Brazil are the highlight. In India, the operation has a smaller scale ".
For 2011, the Brazilian Association of corrugated board (ABPO) provides for expansion of 3.5% in shipments of accessories and plates, boxes, in line with the estimate of the MWV Rigesa. Last year, the industry's sales grew by 2.79%, to 3.3 million tons. In square meters, the high was 1.24%, to 6.3 million. "For 2013, our projection for the market coincides with that of the ABPO. But there is necessarily an alignment of numbers for years to come, "he says.
In the assessment of the Executive, the expeditions of this kind of packing can show changes in higher gross domestic product (GDP) in the next few years. "On the correlation, the GDP has changed and there was detachment of corrugated board", says the Executive. "The new middle class has changed the profile of consumption, which has stabilized at a higher level, but it will grow back."
This behavior directly influences the performance of packaging producers of this type of paper, whose main client is the food retail. Most representative between the segments that use the corrugated cardboard, the food industry tends to grow in the wake of higher purchasing power of the Brazilian, said the Executive. The cosmetics segment also has excelled in terms of pace of expansion, but the orders are still not significant for manufacturers of packaging.
In addition to the investment in Santa Catarina, the MWV Rigesa officially opened about a year ago a new packaging factory in Araçatuba (SP). "There will be other projects, but are still under study," says Iserhard. The Executive sees good in principle, the arrival of the IP national packaging market, through a joint venture with the Brazilian Jari. "This is a great ' player ', which confirms the view that the Brazilian market has potential", says the Executive.