Tag Archives: Brazilian

Anglo American Names Castellari CEO of Brazil Iron-Ore Unit

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Anglo American Plc, the mining company investing $14 billion in projects inBrazil, named Paulo Castellari as chief executive officer of its iron-ore unit in the country to replace Stephan Weber.

Castellari is commercial director at the Brazil operation, running strategy, business development, sales and marketing and the supply chain, London-based Anglo said in a statement today. Weber, who held the position for about two years, will explore other opportunities, Anglo said, without saying if he resigned.

Castellari will oversee construction of Anglo’s largest project, the Minas Rio iron-ore site, which has suffered delays and cost overruns since it was bought in 2008. The project will have initial annual capacity of 26.5 million metric tons and the company expects its first shipment in the second half of 2013.

Under Weber, “we have achieved significant progress with the Minas-Rio project and the operational turnaround of Amapa,” Anglo CEO Cynthia Carroll said in the statement.

Minas Rio includes a mine, processing plant and 326-mile (525-kilometer) pipeline toAcuPortinRio de Janeirostate. The company is studying expanding the project to produce about 80 million tons a year, Weber said in Brasilia on Nov. 23.

Anglo faced delays in getting permits and project design changes that boosted the cost of developing Minas Rio from an estimated investment of $3.8 billion in February 2010. The company also pushed back the start date to 2013 from 2010.

Anglo fell 0.5 percent to 2,481.5 pence inLondonat 1:23 p.m., taking this year’s decline to 25 percent.

Elsewhere in Brazil

InBrazil, Anglo also operates the $1.9 billion Barro Alto nickel project, which began production in March and expects to reach 41,000 tons of annual output in 2013 after attaining full capacity in the second half of next year. The miner also has phosphate and niobium businesses after reversing a decision to sell its Copebras SA and Mineracao Catalao units.

Castellari was trained in administration at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and strategic planning at the London Business Schooland has held several positions within Anglo since 1996.

He was appointed commercial director of the Brazilian iron- ore unit this year, according to Anglo’s website.

Source: Bloomberg

Natura eyes expansion through foreign tie-ups

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Natura, Brazil‘s biggest cosmetics group by sales, is planning to set up joint ventures in countries such as the UK, the US and Russia as part of a revamped expansion plan, the company‘s head has told the Financial Times, using its booming domestic market as a springboard for international growth.

The São Paulo-based company, which sources many of its ingredients from the Amazon rainforest, has had its revenues soar in Brazil, which is set to overtake Japan by 2013 to become the world‘s second-biggest beauty and personal care market after the US, according to Euromonitor.

Alessandro Carlucci, Natura‘s chief executive, said the company had scrapped its original plan to set up its own operations outside Latin America and was now looking for partner businesses, especially in markets where its strategy of direct selling has proved popular.

We realised that there are things we don‘t know about the culture of other countries, how to do business there he said. ―Russia, for example, is a promising market where direct selling is popular but we don‘t understand anything about logistics in Russia, about regulations, the language.

He added that the company was more likely to target smaller businesses in these regions, rather than forge links with other cosmetics giants such as L‘Oréal of France.

The bigger the company is, the more diverse, the less chance there is that they will be able to or want to adhere to our values, he said.

After overtaking US rival Avon in terms of sales in Brazil in 2005, Natura has built a 14.4 per cent share of the Brazilian market, which Euromonitor estimates will be worth about $48.4bn in 2013, almost 30 per cent more than in 2010.

From weekly manicures to an obsession with plastic surgery, Brazilian women take their appearance very seriously. They are estimated to spend over five times more of their annual salary on beauty products than women in the UK, for example.

Natura is also one of the biggest direct sellers in Latin America, with more than 1.3m consultants‖ who sell door to door across the region, marketing everything from açaí body oil to shampoo made from andiroba seeds harvested from trees in the Amazon.

Direct selling has not always proved popular in every market, however, leading the company in 2005 to open a shop instead in Paris – its only experiment so far with operations outside Latin America.

Any potential partner would have to share the company‘s stance on sustainability and preserving the environment, Mr Carlucci added.

The company, which recorded net sales of R$3.9bn ($2.2bn) in the first nine months of this year, has built its brand on using ingredients directly from co-operatives, scientists and farmers in the Amazon, receiving support from the federal government, which is keen to diversify the region‘s economy away from illegal logging.

Source: The Financial Times