Villares Metals aims at ethanol and wind energy companies
Valor Econômico
If we take only size into consideration, Villares Metals is far getting close to CSN, Usiminas and AcerlorMittal Tubarão. What the Brazilian mastodons of steel have capacity to throw in their steel blast furnaces in twelve months, it would take 56 to 75 years to achieve. Super specialized, with sophisticated steel applications - from valves for car engines, airplane landing gears, and surgical instruments to dental implants -, the company also wants to guarantee a larger share in three areas of business in expansion in Brazil: extraction of oil, production of sugar and ethanol, and manufacture of towers for wind energy generation.
Nestled in a large wooded area in Sumaré, 120 km from São Paulo, on the side of the Anhangüera Road, Villares Metals is the only manufacturer of high-alloy steels in the Southern Hemisphere, with leadership in the Latin American market. It has capacity for 101 thousand tons of steel a year and it already operates with more than 90 thousand. It makes special steels known as long steel, obtained from mixtures of chromium and nickel alloys and other metals to gain ultra resistance. In general, they are used in high-impact activities, such as the landing of a 195 jef of Embraer or a 330 Airbus, or high performance activities, such as parts for oil wellheads.
In the strategy of growth of VM, Harry Peter Grandberg, President of the company, explains nobody can escape the obvious. "The huge investment plan of Petrobras is the great star of the moment". The challenge, he says, is to understand what the technology used in the exploration of pre-salt will be and what types of steel will be required to support the new environment of the oil industry, with extraction at ultra deep waters. Therefore, one of the initiatives is to put up an outpost of research and development for applications of their steel in Rio, beside the State company and its major suppliers, such as piping manufacturers.
Another look is given to the sugar and ethanol sector that, at his assessment, is strongly returning after the crisis it lived two or three years ago. The market in that industry are the plants. The goal is to sell shafts for sugarcane mills, made in stainless steel. In such market, the bet is both in new installations and in the replacement of equipment of the old facilities. The generation of energy from wind, sector that gains room in Brazil - mainly in the Northeast -, arises as another important market that sharpens the sales appetite of the company. The target are the wind tower facilities. The core engine of the tower, which causes the blades to rotate, has demanded high-strength steel, obtained with mixture of metallic alloys. Another two noble markets are the automotive and aeronautics.
VM does not deliver only steel. In its facilities, where rolling mills produce huge blocks of up to 23 tons and billets of two thousand kilograms that will be cut and rolled before going to clients, the company makes custom-made parts. For Sifco, the biggest manufacturer of front suspension components for cars, it made a 37 ton crankshaft. With that, it started replacing components that so far were imported. In its portfolio of clients are companies like GE. In December, it was approved to deliver the American company forged shafts for large electric engines. The contract put VM among the three suppliers of GE in the world for that type of part.
With the approval, the company believes new opportunities have been opened in the industry dedicated to the oil and gas sector, to sell steel to manufacturers of machinery and equipment used in the construction of oil platforms and refineries.