Cooperativa Mista Rondon (Copagril), a cooperative from the city of Marechal Cândido Rondon, in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná, has inaugurated, Janunary 28, a poultry slaughterhouse.
The new enterprise should generate around 3,100 new jobs, of which 1,600 direct and 1,500 indirect.
Copagril invested around US$ 15 million in the installations. Of that total, US$ 7.5 million came from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and the Regional Development Bank for the Extreme South (BRDE).
All of this through the Cooperative Development Program for the Addition of Value to Farming Production (Prodecoop) – one of the lines of credit in the Agricultural and Livestock Plan supplied by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply.
The new productive complex has a capacity for slaughter of 160,000 birds/day. Initially, it should slaughter 5,000 chickens/day, reaching 30,000 in March and 80,000 in December.
The forecast is that at the end of 2006 the enterprise should be slaughtering 160,000 birds/day. Apart from the domestic consumption, the slaughterhouse should also supply the foreign market.
Export
Brazilian poultry exports yielded US$ 2.6 billion last year, which represented an increase of 44% in relation to the year of 2003.
In volume, 2.470 million tons of the product was shipped between January and December 2004, which meant an increase of 26% in relation to the same period in 2003, according to information of the Brazilian Poultry Exporters Association (Abef).
According to Julio Cardoso, Abef’s president, the revenue increased mainly due to the increase in exports of chicken cuts, which in this segment has the highest added value.
The revenue of the product last year reached US$ 1.7 billion, an increase of 55% in relation to 2003. “The big deal was chicken cuts,” stated Cardoso.
Brazil’s main market for poultry was Asia, which became for the first time the main buyer in terms of revenue, with a total of US$ 746.5 million in 2004, which represented an increase of 82% in value.
The Middle East was the region that bought most poultry in terms of volume, a total of 750,000 tonnes and US$ 672.5 million in revenue. The European Union bought US$ 469.4 million and Russia US$ 159.7 million.
ANBA ”“ Brazil-Arab News Agency