Cosan plans building four new plants
Valor Econômico 09/23/10
Besides the project of reaching 70 million tons of sugarcane crushing capacity over the next three years only with the enlargement of the current plants, Cosan secretly plans how the next wave of growth in sugar, alcohol and energy will take place. The company is currently able to crush 63 million tons a year. In an interview to Valor, Rubens Ometto, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Company, said the plan being developed is intended to draw the next steps of the company, which wants to overcome the mark of 100 million tons of installed capacity in the coming years. "We can get to 100 million, 110 million tons of crushing. Cash is not a problem for us", said Ometto referring to the cash generation expected with the sugar and energy operations, with the logistics operations (Rumo) and the fuel distribution operations, which have become gigantic as it joined Shell. "That partnership has also substantially reduced our debt which is zeroed", said Ometto.Three strategies are being considered as regards planning: "greenfield" projects (plants built from zero), "brownfield" projects (improvements) and acquisitions. Only in "greenfields" Cosan has four projects of plants - two in Goiás, one in Naviraí (MS) and another one in Andradina (SP). "Some were already granted licenses to be built up, as it is the case of Naviraí", added the President of Cosan Açúcar e Álcool, Pedro Muzutani, who accompanied Ometto yesterday in the inauguration of the Caarapó plant, located in the municipality of the same name, in Mato Grosso do Sul. In each unit projected for Goiás it will be possible to achieve the crushing of 8 million tons of sugarcane. "Considering the three projects in the region [one of them, in Jataí (GO), is already in operation], we are able to have 24 million tons of capacity", said Ometto. The projects of Andradina and Naviraí have potential to add another 10 million tons.
The "greenfield" projects cheer up the entrepreneur, but what seems more to cheer him up the most is the challenge of buying plants. Acquisitions are the registered mark of Ometto, as reminds his now partner, Roberto Rezende Barbosa, founder of NovAmérica and until mid 2009 owner of the brand açúcar União, currently in the hands of Ometto. "He got a taste for thing still in the early times of the business, when he created the name Cosan, fruit of the merger of initial of the plants Costa Pinto and Santa Barbara. He hasn't stopped after that", plays Rezende.