PLANO NACIONAL DE RESÍDUOS SÓLIDOS - Revista O Papel

locations. As such, we stipulated an average rangebetween 80 km and 100 km from the industrialunit. It is also important to point out that Eldoradowill already start up activities with a program thatincludes certification by the Forest StewardshipCouncil (FSC) of all its forestry areas by 2017.O Papel – With regards to logistics investments,at what stage is the project?Grubisich – First of all, I would like to say thatthe Eldorado mill location is another competitiveadvantage, since it allows for integrated logistics.Installed in an area of 900 hectares along theParaná River, in Três Lagoas, the company will counton three logistic modes for receiving raw materialsand moving its production. Our objective is to utilizethe highway/railroad and waterway/railroad modes,which present greater economies of scale and lowerenvironmental impacts. In order to put this intopractice, we have already acquired our own fleet oflocomotives and railroad cars specially developedfor Eldorado, to be used in transporting pulp tothe company’s terminal at the Port of Santos, fromwhere it will be shipped to the main markets in theworld. Initially, the company intends to export thecommodity to China and Europe.O Papel – Is labor qualification also beingcarrying out in parallel with the site construction?Will Eldorado give priority to inhabitants in theregion when contracting people?Grubisich – Today, Eldorado has 2,000 directemployees and will employ another thousand whenthe mill begins operating, which shall benefit evenmore development in eastern Mato Grosso do Sulstate. We are focusing on building high performanceteams. For such, a series of training and qualificationprograms are being developed. One of the programsis called My First Profession, where 190 high schoolyoungsters are undergoing training at Senai, inthe industrial maintenance and pulp productionprocess areas. We also have a qualification programin the forestry area, particularly in harvesting andmoving wood in forests, through training based ona virtual reality system. These and other programswe’ve been developing will expand the number ofyoungsters available to work not only at Eldoradobut also other companies in the region.O Papel – What is the structure of the growthprogram which foresees producing 5 million tons ofpulp by 2020?Grubisich – The pulp market is growing at fullspeed. The estimate is that this market demands amill with an annual production of 1.5 million tonsevery year and a half. Taking this into consideration,our growth program is structured into three phases:first, start-up of the single production line of 1.5million tons of pulp starting November 2012;second, in 2017, when we will start operating thesecond 1.5 million tons production line; and third,in 2020, also with a capacity of 1.5 million tons.With the operational optimizations and efficiencyimprovements, however, we believe that these threephases combined shall reach a production volumeof 5 million tons.O Papel – Is it already possible to envision themain challenges to be faced by Eldorado throughoutthis expansion project? How does the companyintend to overcome them?Grubisich – The first question we ask is thefollowing: will there be a market for so much pulp?The answer resides in the fact that the global pulpmarket is on the rise, registering growth ratesbetween 2.5% and 3% a year. With specific regardsto the hardwood pulp market, growth estimatesare even higher, between 4% and 5% a year. Thesefigures sustain the analysis that the world willneed a mill with a 1.5 million tons hardwood pulpcapacity every year and a half. Such growth forecastwill certainly lead to a new cycle of investmentsin the pulp market worldwide. Within this context,Eldorado has many positive factors to become evenstronger, such as a solid capital structure, with anadequate balance and without the burden of highdebt in relation to its cash generation capacity. Thisis a significant competitive advantage, since we canhave a high return and use our capacity to generatecash to finance future growth programs. •abril/April 2012 - Revista O Papel53