Geovana Pagel, special envoy
Rio de Janeiro – Perdigão, a traditional exporter of chicken to the Middle East, intends to start selling greater added value products, including sausages and hamburgers, to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
"With this we hope to have a 20% increase in sales (to the region)," stated the company Foreign Relations director, Ricardo Meneses, yesterday during the Expo Abras 2004 fair. Export of the new products, to be halal, should start next year. The company, which is commemorating 70 years in operation, has been selling to the Middle East since 1977.
According to the director, the Arabs already answer to 30% of Perdigão export. "The Arab countries are currently one of our main markets. This is so true that all the units follow Islamic regulations, executing halal slaughter," he explained. The company also has an office in Dubai so as to simplify sales to the region.
Perdigão has the largest stand among the exhibitors at Expo Abras, with an area of 720 square metres. The company forecast is to receive around 6,000 visitors a day.
In the first half of this year, Perdigão export rose 61.4% in terms of revenues and 24.6% in terms of volume. Export totalled 149,400 from April to June, a growth of 19.9% with regard to the second quarter last year. Company foreign trade represented 59.4% of net revenues in the period, around US$ 412.6 million.
New factory
Perdigão also took advantage of Expo Abras to announce investment of around US$ 104.5 million. Most of these funds, around US$ 82.5 million will be invested in the construction of a new agro-industrial complex in the city of Mineiros, in the midwestern Brazilian state of Goiás.
According to Meneses, the work will be partially funded by a Goiás state special program for government investment, and by a midwestern fund, through the Bank of Brazil. "The unit will be destined to halal slaughter and to the processing of turkey and Chester. There will be two slaughterhouses, one hatchery, an animal feed plant, and a distribution centre, and should be put into operation in the second half of 2006," he explained.
The company is going to generate around 2,000 direct jobs, and 6,000 indirect jobs in this new unit. The complex will have a processing capacity of 81,000 tonnes/year, the project forecasts an increase in company revenues of around US$ 190 million.
Another US$ 22 million, part of the company investment program for 2004/2005, will be turned to logistics, infrastructure, and improvement of production lines, including distribution and expansion of the productive capacity in various units in the southern Brazilian states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.
