Company to invest US$ 505 million in logistics
Valor Econômico
Copersucar plans investing nearly R$ 1 billion (US$ 505.1 million) in this 2009/10 harvest, informed Luís Roberto Pogetti, new administration president of the group. A great part of these resources will be intended for Uniduto, a company in which Copersucar has 26% of interest, in partnership with other plants and, among them, Cosan. Uniduto was created with the purpose of building pipelines for the alcohol, in other words, ‘alcoholducts'. Another part should be invested in railway modals for the flow of the production of sugar and alcohol in the domestic market.
With an income of nearly R$ 4.8 billion (US$ 2.42 billion) in the 2008/09 harvest, the stockholding plants of Copersucar processed 67.6 million tons of sugarcane in the period, produced 3.68 billion liters of alcohol and 3.2 million tons of sugar. For the new harvest, 2009/10, Copersucar estimates earnings of nearly R$ 6.6 billion (US$ 3.3 billion), with the crushing of 78.6 million tons of sugarcane.
Founded in 1959, Copersucar, formerly called Cooperativa de Produtores de Cana-de-açúcar, Açúcar e Álcool do Estado de São Paulo (Cooperative of the Sugarcane, Sugar and Alcohol Producers of the State of São Paulo), was formed of only ten plants in São Paulo, and two regional entities, among them cooperatives of producers of Piracicaba and Ribeirão Preto. Today, the company follows a path focusing on the logistics infrastructure in the country and it seeks greater foreign market. Last year, it closed contracts for the export of alcohol to Japan and it currently intends to expand its domains in the USA. In 2008/09, the company exported almost 1 billion liters of alcohol and 2.5 million tons of sugar from its stockholding plants.