Votorantim to invest 15% more until 2011
O Estado de S. Paulo
The Votorantim group decided to increase by 15.4% its investment program until 2011, taking advantage of the good moment of the Brazilian economy. The segments of cement and long steel will be the priorities of the group, said Carlos Ermírio de Moraes, President of the Board of Directors of Votorantim Participações. With the change, the disbursements of the group will be increased to R$ 30 billion (US$ 16.4 billion). For this year, the investment gets to R$ 4.5 billion (US$ 2.5 billion).
The decision of increasing the volume of investments of the program defined for the 2007-2011 period was announced yesterday to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during a hearing at the Cultural Center of Banco do Brasil (CCBB, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil), the temporary headquarters of the Government. According to Carlos Ermírio de Moraes, in the last three years the group invested R$ 20 billion (US$ 10.9 billion) of the R$ 26 billion (US$ 14.2 billion) that were originally planned to be invested during the five years of the program.
With the resumption of the economic growth and the positive prospects for the civil engineering sector, the Group decided to review the investments. "We have new projects coming", said Moraes after the meeting with Lula. "The Group has invested in new plants, both of cement and long steel, and we do not forget to take care of other areas, which are metals, pulp and orange", he said.
During the meeting, the Votorantim group executives presented a list of 20 projects that should be implemented until 2013. In the cement sector, the units installed last year and those coming into operation in 2010 should represent an increase of 5.25 million tons of cement offered in the market.
In the pulp and paper segment, the investments will be made according to the process of market recovery, said Moraes. "There are new investments foreseen, but the market is still not completely recovered, we have to adapt the investments as the market matures and demands new capabilities", he said. According to him, the pulp sector has become a "very important asset" for the group in 2009, after the merger of Votorantim Celulose e Papel (VCP) and Aracruz, which resulted in the creation of Fibria, the world's largest producer of eucalyptus pulp.