Red
sun
Brazilian industrial sector bets on collaboration as a manner to find a way
around the crisis and conquer new challenges for the tomato processing segment
The Brazilian tomato processing indus-
try is getting prepared to face the finan-
cial difficulties that started in 2015 and are
likely to continue throughout 2016. In the
past season, 1.4 million tons of table to-
matoes were destined for industrial pur-
poses. Compared to 2014, there was a re-
duction of 110 thousand tons. According
to the executive director of the Brazilian
Association of the Tomato Supply Chain
(Abratop), Antônio Carlos Tadiotti, al-
though being a rather impotent crisis for
the sector, investments were quite limit-
ed and many companies have devised pro-
grams focused on price stabilization.
“All the parties involved took their share
of responsibility and cooperation”, he pon-
ders. In light of limited investments in 2015,
the official maintains that the trend points to
one more growing season marked by hard-
ships. Furthermore, the national crisis is not
to be overlooked, as it is adversely affecting
the market and making it difficult for the
companies to adjust the prices of the seg-
ment. Moreover, the high value of the dollar
is triggering the domino effect in the prices
of packaging, pesticides, fertilizers and to-
mato seeds, which come from abroad. De-
spite all obstacles, Brazil is now the fifth larg-
est producer of processed tomatoes.
Abratop, in line with the market of bush
tomatoes, specific for the industry, has it
that, within the realm of agricultural pro-
duction, higher productivity rates were the
result of research works – genetic enhance-
ment resulted into higher agricultural per-
formance per hectare. Even so, Tadiotti
explains that our national production vol-
umes are not big enough to supply all the
Sílvio Ávila
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