The margins are high tooLOOK north from atop the 120-metre (390-foot) bleaching tower at the Horizonte 1 pulp mill, and all you see is plantations of tall, slender eucalyptus trees. They stretch from the factory gate, across the gentle undulations of Mato Grosso do Sul, a state in Brazil’s centre-west, all the way to the horizon. “That’s our competitive advantage,” explains Alexandre Figueiredo, who is in charge of production at the plant. Its owner, Fibria, is the world’s biggest producer of “short-fibre” cellulose pulp, which is used to make such things as newsprint, nappies and banknotes. (“Long-fibre” is used for high-grade paper and packaging.)
As its name suggests, Mato Grosso do Sul (roughly, “southern thick bush” in Portuguese) has vast expanses of cerrado, or tropical savannah, a chunk of which was long ago turned into farmland, some of which has more recently been planted with eucalyptus. Most of Fibria’s 568,000 hectares of plantations lie within 200km of its mills. Eldorado, a rival with a mill on the other side of Três Lagoas (a city of 115,000 that is fast...Continue reading
Source: Business and finance http://ift.tt/1S5MLpw
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