|
Braskem, a Brazilian company that is the leader in the production of thermoplastic resins in Latin America, imported around 400,000 tons of naphtha from the counties in North Africa in the first quarter of this year.
According to the just-released company financial report for the first half of the year, a total of 1.2 million tons of naphtha were purchased in the period, and of this total, 35% came from abroad, mainly from the countries in North Africa.
The company does not inform the name of the suppliers in the report, but in the region there are various Arab countries that produce the raw material, including Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Egypt.
The first three were included as naphtha suppliers to Brazil in the first half of this year. The rest of the material used as an input by Braskem is purchased on the domestic market, from energy company Petrobras.
Braskem has identified a growth of costs due to the increase in the average price of naphtha, which rose from US$ 352 per ton in the second half of last year to US$ 445 in the same period this year, an increase of 26%.
In the first half, the price grew 30%. The depreciation of the United States dollar against the Brazilian real, however, minimized the effect, according to the company. In April, the product reached a record US$ 521 per ton.
The volume of thermoplastic resin sales in the first half of the year was 7% greater than in the same period in 2004. Company gross revenues reached US$ 2.6 billion (in current figures) in the half, with growth of 22% over 2004.
Gross revenues reached US$ 3.4 billion. In the accumulated result for the last 12 months, gross revenues total led US$ 5.5 billion.
Company profits were record for the first half of the year and reached US$ 274 million. The value reflects growth of around US$ 400 million in comparison to the same period last year, when the company posted losses of US$ 126 million. This performance is attributed mainly to the foreign market results.
Abroad
The company registered net revenues of US$ 509 million with exports in the first half of the year, representing a growth of 44% over the US$ 353 million obtained in the same period in 2004.
Exports are responsible for 22% of Braskem net revenues. The company hopes to end the year with exports of US$ 1 billion.
The markets that purchase resins from the company are in North and Central America, with 47.4%, Europe, with 17%, and Africa, Asia and the Middle East, with 15.4%.
South America also presented expressive growth as a buyer as the region answered to just 16% of company export revenues in the second half of 2004.
Braskem is among the three largest private capital companies in Brazil. The company has three plants in the country and produces around 5.8 million tons of thermoplastic resin and other petrochemical products per year.
Anba - www.anba.com.br
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.