São Paulo – Company Grupo Fuga Couros, based in the city of Marau, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, wishes to do more business with the Arab market. The company produces leather, as well as other products such as beef, biodiesel and pet food, and has made sporadic exports to Egypt. These shipments happened about two years ago and included bovine meat and suet.
“We believe in the business potential of the region because the purchase power, in general, is increasing, particularly in the bigger cities,” stated the manager of the group’s Biodiesel Unit, Paulo José Fuga. The executive believes that exporting beef to Egypt is a business opportunity. “We believe there is great potential to increase sales to the Arab countries,” he says. The company is also seeking opportunities to sell their leather in the region.
Fuga is a great entrepreneurial group in Rio Grande do Sul, with annual revenues of R$ 1.2 billion (US$ 513.2 million, by current exchange rates). Half of this sum comes from the domestic market and half comes from abroad. The company is particularly known for it’s leather business, of which 60% of sales is in the foreign market and 40% in Brazil. The company sells finished leather in the domestic market, for shoes and furniture industries. In other countries it sells mainly wet-blue and semi-finished leather for furniture manufacturers, according to Paulo José.
The Fuga tanneries are located in Marau, where the company headquarters is, in Jales, city in the state of São Paulo, Hidrolândia (Goiás), Paranaíba (Mato Grosso do Sul), and in Várzea Grande (Mato Grosso). The company also has a leather sales center in the city of Novo Hamburgo, region in Rio Grande do Sul known as a hub of shoe manufacturers. Most of the raw material, animal hides, is acquired by the company from other slaughterhouses. A smaller part comes from their own slaughterhouses, according to Paulo.
In all, the Fuga group has five slaughter units, working with 43,800 heads of cattle per month. The main slaughterhouse and a second unit are located in Aparecida do Taboado, in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazilian Midwest. Other units are located in Várzea Grande, Aparecida d’Oeste, and Jales.
In Jales, attached to the tannery, the group also has a pet food factory. It was created to add value to one of the leather by-products, rawhide shavings. They are transformed into pet food, and the processing capacity at the factory is of 1,000 tons of shavings per months, generating 250 tons of the final product. The pet treats go to the Brazilian, North American and European markets.
The company is also in the agriculture sector, as they harvest wheat, soy, corn, oat and triticale in the cities of Gentil, Ibirapuitã and Marau, all in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. In these regions, the Fuga group has structures with grain and drying silos and with storage capacity of 1,000 tons. The company also works with eucalyptus reforestation in the area. The biodiesel production unit is located in the city of Camargo.
The beginning
The group was created in 1947 by a group of founding partners, among them their greatest entrepreneur, José Fuga. In the beginning, the company was called Curtume Marauense. In less than ten years, the company started exporting leather to the United States, market which they still serve today.
Contact:
Fuga Couros
Phone No.: +55 (54) 3342-3277
Website: www.fugacouros.com.br
*Translated by Silvia Lindsey
