Noble already makes US$ 1 billion in Brazil
Valor Econômico
Four years ago, the Asian group Noble Group had six employees in Brazil and an operation that basically restricted to the business of buying and selling commodities. In Asian speed, in the past four years, Noble entered a cycle of growth in the country that meant investments of nearly US$ 2 billion in a broad business portfolio, transcending the origination of agricultural and mineral raw materials, to logistics services, processing of grain and coffee, production of biofuels and sugar. The Brazilian Ricardo Leiman, who a year ago left the Board of Directors of the international operations of the company to become the global CEO of Noble, advances the company should close 2010 with earnings of US$ 1 billion in Brazil, significant growth of 66% compared to the US$ 600 million registered in 2009. Worldwide, the company, traded on the stock exchange of Singapore, earns US$ 40 billion.
The tendency is that the Brazilian share in the earnings of the group grows. He says Brazil was the country chosen by the group as a strategic region in agricultural products. With available land, favorable soil and weather, Brazil has the production cost levels appropriate to the strategies of the company. The fact is that today, Brazil, where Noble has 8 thousand employees, is a cradle of projects of the company. The multinational will soon put in operation a soybean crusher with capacity to process 1.3 million tons of grain a year and a biodiesel plant in the State of Mato Grosso, main national producer of soybeans. Besides, it will inaugurate, in the second half of 2011, an intermodal terminal for sugar and grains Votuporanga (SP), with capacity to handle 1 million tons. The purpose, says Leiman, is to use the infrastructure for its own volumes as well as to render services to third parties. Noble's latest investment in Brazil was the acquisition of two sugar and alcohol plants of the Cerradinho group, in São Paulo, for R$ 1.6 billion (US$ 941.2 million), two weeks ago.
The company already had two units and, now, with four plants, it will process 17.5 million tons of sugarcane, which will put it among the largest in the sector. Together the units will produce 1.34 million tons of sugar, 600 million liters of ethanol and cogenerate 750 thousand megawatts-hour from the sugarcane bagasse. The company is already operating a terminal of liquid fuels in the Port de Itaqui, in Maranhão, and it is building a grain terminal in Santos. It also has two fertilizer mixers, product of an exchange made with farmers for commodities.