São Paulo – The beauty products and personal hygiene sector is among those that grow most in Brazil. Last year, when a significant share of industry was sliding, revenues of the cosmetics product sector rose almost 8%, and innovation is among the factors responsible for this. According to the president of the Brazilian Association of Toiletries, Perfumes & Cosmetics Industries (Abihpec), João Carlos Basílio, the sector invests, on average, 2% of revenues in research and development.
Cosmetics is among the group of sectors that have managed to grow much despite the current scenery, while other areas are stagnated. The group includes food and beverages, pharmaceuticals and medical, hospital and dentistry equipment. In the latter case, for example, sales on the domestic market rose over 25% in 2010, a year in which the country’s GDP grew 7.5%.
According to André Macedo, a researcher at the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which periodically studies industrial indices, these are the sectors that depend mostly on the behaviour of the domestic market than on the international scenery, that is, they do not suffer so much with the European crisis and do not have such need for financing as is the case in the heavier sectors of industry. “This behaviour may be justified by the greater volume of salary mass,” he said.
In fact, the vice president at the Union of Dental, Medical and Hospital Items and Equipments Industry of the State of São Paulo (Sinaemo), Paulo Henrique Fraccaro, said, as was the case with Basílio, that the social rise of Brazilians is at the root of this industrial growth. “We have a process of social inclusion and, with this, there is greater demand in the health area, especially in the SUS [Brazil’s Single Health System]”, said Fraccaro. “Furthermore, more and more [company] employees are calling for special attention and companies are buying health schemes,” he added.
That is, with greater income, people buy better quality food, take better care of their health and personal hygiene and seek more health treatment. Furthermore, the size of Brazil’s territory and population require an enormous scale of production and a broad distribution network, areas that are not easy for foreign competitors.
Competition in some cases, like that of medical equipment, is fierce, according to Fraccaro, but in others, like cosmetics, it is not concerning. “We are very competitive,” said Basílio. To him, imported products can only threaten the market if they enter the country below production cost.
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*Translated by Mark Ament