São Paulo – Brazil’s National Petroleum Industry Organization (Onip) and the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex) are in the process of finding foreign businesses interested in forming joint ventures with Brazilian companies that supply products to the oil industry. The two organizations embarked in a project in mid-last year in a bid to foster said ventures and thus increase domestic availability of oil and gas industry supplies.
According to the Onip superintendent in charge of the project, Bruno Musso, 21 Brazilian companies have been selected to participate. An action targeting their foreign counterparts will take place next month at Offshore Europe, an exhibition running from September 8th to 11th in Aberdeen, Scotland. The week after the exhibition, the Brazilian project’s managers will meet with British executives to talk.
Overall, seven overseas canvassing actions are scheduled, according to Musso. Not all of the meetings will be linked to exhibitions; some will be dedicated trips or missions. Three other actions will be held in Europe, two in North America, probably in the United States, and one in Asia. Regarding the latter, Onip and Apex-Brasil are primarily looking for know-how in ship parts.
Musso claims that initially, there are no actions targeting the Middle East. The project will continue until halfway through next year. However, the executive notes that he would like for the initiative to be made permanent, and in case this happens, other regions will be considered. “We cannot go to all of the markets right now,” he says. According to the superintendent, though, the project is open to applications from foreign companies, as long as they’re interested in actual joint ventures, rather than simply in commercial representation or product distribution partnerships.
Musso remarks that trade partnerships are important to the market, but are not part of Onip’s work. The organization’s mission is to help the national industry be competitive. The superintendent says that today, a relevant share of the products required by the oil and gas industry which are unavailable domestically in Brazil are the higher value-added ones, hence the Apex-Brasil/Onip partnership to this end.
The goal is for the joint ventures to enable Brazilian companies to manufacture using foreign technology under licensing, for instance. “That way, we will add local content where there was none before,” says Musso. He relates that some Brazilian corporations selected for the project boast modern structure, but no engineering of their own. The focus should be on supplying the domestic industry, and not on exporting.
The Apex-Brasil/Onip partnership was put in place in mid-2014. After that, road shows were held to publicize the strategy in eight different industry federations, with priority given to those with the highest number of companies. The participating enterprises then answered online questionnaires, which led to a preliminary selection. A shortlist of 35 companies was made, and visits were made to each of them, first for meetings with their boards and then for seeing their plants, facilities, equipment, training levels etc. The list was narrowed down to 21 companies.
The businesses selected produce a wide variety of products, but most are in the metal mechanics industry. Consumer electronics businesses are also on the list, but the primary emphasis is on manufacturing, rather than services. The companies are already industry suppliers, and their competencies were assessed. “We were very thorough, because we’re not about to introduce just any company to the foreigners,” he says. As part of the project, the foreigners will enter the Brazilian market in a safer way, with backing from Onip and Apex-Brasil, Musso believes.
The project will find potential joint ventures and get the two parties in touch. This should take place at a final stage. “And then we will hope they’ll marry one another,” Musso concludes. Although the oil industry is in troubled times (prices are very low), the superintendent claims this is a market that thinks long-term.
Contact
Onip – National Petroleum Industry Organization
Website: www.onip.org.br
Telephone: +55 (21) 2563 4615
Email: onip@onip.org.br
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
