São Paulo – The Middle East has gained prominence among the export destinations for Minerva slaughterhouse, one of the three largest Brazilian exporters of beef, headquartered in Barretos, in the interior of São Paulo. The region, which answered to 19.2% of revenues with sales of raw beef in 2008, rose to 25.6% last year. The information was disclosed by the company on Tuesday (2).
If only the last quarter of last year is taken into consideration, participation of the Middle East rose even more among the Minerva clients. The slaughterhouse had 36.8% of revenues connected to raw beef in the Middle East over the last three months of 2009, against 19.2% in the same three months in 2008. The company president, Fernando Galleti Queiroz, pointed out geographic diversification of sales last year. “We had lower market concentration,” he said, in a teleconference.
Last year, Minerva had gross export revenues of 1.87 billion Brazilian reals (US$ 1 billion) against 1.46 billion reals (US$ 812 million) in 2008. There was growth of 27.6%. Revenues on the foreign market in the last quarter of the year were 453.2 million (US$ 252 million), reduction of 11.3% over the same period in 2008, when they totalled 510.7 million reals (US$ 284 million). There was similar change in company gross turnover. It totalled 2.7 billion reals (US$ 1.5 billion) in 2009, growth of 20.1% over the previous year and 727.2 million reals (US$ 405 million) in the quarter, reduction of 1.5%.
Last year, the Middle East was the region of the world that most imported raw beef from Minerva. The second main importer market was the Americas, with 19.7%, and the third, the Community of Independent States (CIS, former Soviet Union), with 18.9%, in the fourth place came Asia, with 11.6%, the fifth was Europe, with 11.4%, and the sixth, Africa, with 7.8%. Other nations answered to 5.1% of foreign sales. Africa, where there are also Arab nations, had lower participation, as in 2008 its share had been 12.8%.
According to Queiroz, the good performance for the company in late 2009 is the result of maturing investment made in previous years and greater profitability of operations, due to rationalisation lived by the sector industry, as well as risk management and efforts for improvement of scale and prices. He said that in 2010 the company expects growth of demand for animal protein, especially in developing nations. Minerva also plans to invest in distribution, both on the domestic and foreign market.
*Translated by Mark Ament
