Food sector increases Westfalia sales in the country
Valor Econômico - 05/26/2008
Westfalia Separator, one of the five companies that the German giant GEA has in Brazil, has been making calculations. As a large engineering project manufacturer, which has the production centrifuges for its main activity, the company has closely observed the performance of the food industry and the behavior of the newly developed biofuel market in Brazil. And such observation has been paying off. Last year, the food industry surpassed the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country and increased its sales in 10.6%, reaching R$ 230.6 billion (US$ 139.8 billion). According to the Brazilian Association of Food Industries (Abia), the growth is a result from the increase of credit in the country as well as from the improvement of the annual average income of the population. And since this sector is a prospective client, Westfalia has already delivered its headquarters its sales projection and also the request to make some investments in its plant installed in Campinas (SP). Ivor Fazzioni, Westfalia Separator's Officer in the country, tells that between 2008 and 2011 he intends to increase the sales of the company here by at least 5%. And the projection is based on the sales of the Brazilian branch last year, which amounted to 30 million euros. "Our unit in the country does not export. So, our growth depends on the development of the domestic market, and we have been feeling this good moment of the industry of dairy products, of vegetable oils, and alcohol and sugar", says the officer. It is exactly the alcohol and sugar sector than may leverage investments in Campinas. The company studies allocating US$ 1 million to make its operation capable of producing centrifuges of a larger size, which has this sector of the economy as its major client. Besides requesting this authorization to the Headquarters, the director of Westfalia in Brazil says that he has already talked to GEA in order to make the unit of Campinas a world supplier of centrifuges for the other branches of the German multinational. In the meantime those are just talks, but the officer knows that should he receive the green light, the operation in Brazil will have a substantial sales' increase destined to the promising markets of China and India, which would require strong investments in the São Paulo's plant.