The company announced the $1m plant’s opening last week. It had been in construction for about 10 months, added Manuela Lopes, marketing manager for Alltech Crop Science in Brazil.
The company has focused on increasing the crop input products produced in Brazil at this time because Alltech has had an average annual growth of 30% for crop science products in the country, she said. The new facility is expected to support continued growth in future years.
“At our existing facility in Araucária, we had reached 100% capacity,” she told FeedNavigator. “The new plant will allow us to be more agile and efficient and allow us to attend to our clients faster.”
Plant details and market
The new plant increases production for the company in Brazil by about 6m liters, said Lopes. Previously, Alltech was producing about 4m liters of crop and feed crop supporting products in the country.
“The plant in Uberlândia uses state-of-the-art technology to enable Alltech Crop Science to produce 10 million liters per year,” she said. “The facility will be used to produce and manufacture an array of agriculture inputs such as organo-mineral fertilizers, and mixed and simple mineral fertilizers for use in cropping systems.”
The new facility is located in the state of Minas Gerais, said Lopes. “This strategic location in Brazil provides [Alltech Crop Sciences] with greater options for transportation, logistic gains in speed and cost-effectiveness for the entire central region of Brazil, which will have an impact on the agility and quality of our service,” she added.
“Brazil is a major player in the global agribusiness industry and is a leading market for [Alltech Crop Sciences] globally,” she said. “The growth potential for the company in Uberlândia is huge.”
With the existing Araucária facility and the new Uberlândia plant, we now have the capacity to supply the entire Central-West and Northeast Regions of Brazil more efficiently,” she added.
Brazilian feed crops
The two states responsible for the largest portion of Brazil’s feed crop production in recent years are in the states of Mato Graosso and Parana, which are in the Center-West and Southern portions of the country, said the US Department of Agriculture. However, Brazil’s savannah and grassland regions, which stretch across 11 states in the Center-West, Northeast, North, South and Southeast, have also seen an expansion of feed crop growth.
In 2015/16 the country produced about 75m metric tons of corn, which was a drop of 12% from previous years, said the US Department of Agriculture. Production in 2016/17 is expected to reach 82m metric tons.
The country is expected to produce roughly 5.6m metric tons of wheat in 2015/16, the department said.
It also is expected to grow about 103m metric tons of soybeans for the 2016/17 year, an increase from previous years, said the department. The growth prediction is based on an uptick in planted acres.