11/05/2007 15h08

Ouro Fino invests to double the sales in five years

DCI - 11/05/2007

Founded 20 years ago in Ribeirão Preto (SP), Ouro Fino intends to double its sales in the next five years and move into the stock market. The company, one of the ten largest companies of the sector of drugs for animals - anthelmintics, insecticides, antibiotics -, is diversifying its field of activity. For such, it is building two new manufacturing units, one for the production of vaccines, in Cravinhos (SP), and another one for the production of crops protection products, in Uberaba (MG). The vaccine plant, which requires an investment of nearly R$ 35 million (US$ 20.1 million), will come into operation in the second half of 2008, with the capacity to produce 60 million doses. According to the VP and partner of the Ouro Fino Group, Dolivar Couracci Neto, this unit will initially produce vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease, but, in the short term, it will have four other products of the segment. The group entered into a partnership with the Butantã Institute for the development of the Center for Research and Development of Veterinary Immunobiological Products. It is a public-private partnership (PPP), which will allow the production of anti-rabies vaccine and the antiophidic serum. The executive department expects that with the beginning of operations of the vaccine plant, the sales increase from the current R$ 190 million (US$ 109.2 million) to R$ 250 million (US$ 143.7 million) in 2008. In order to have an idea of the business, the Brazilian market of preventive vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease corresponds to more than R$ 600 million (US$ 344.8 million) with the sale of almost 400 million doses per year. The goal of the company is to become one of the largest companies of the agribusiness, therefore it decided to invest in the area of crops protection products, a market with sales of over US$ 4 billion per year. Besides Brazil, this new unit may cater to the foreign market, mainly the Latin America countries in which Ouro Fino already has an exportation network.