The Capital Advisor by Eduardo Voglino - 04/01/2024
By Writing Team
Posted in January 4, 2024
Klabin acquired the forest assets of Arauco for $1.16 billion last year, boosting Ambipar’s biofertilizer business.
The purchase of Arauco’s forest assets by Klabin (KLBN11) for $1.16 billion at the end of last year will leverage the biofertilizer business of Ambipar (AMBP3).
Partners for nearly a decade, what is waste for one serves as input for the other.
The 85,000 hectares of forests acquired by Klabin represent approximately 31.5 million tons of standing timber.
When transformed into paper and pulp, the raw material will generate a significant volume of waste that will be turned into fertilizers by the partner.
Last year, Ambipar increased its production of organic fertilizers by 25%, to 500,000 tons.
The company does not provide a projection for 2024 but acknowledges that the amount of raw material for production is encouraging.
“We are going to ride this market movement. We have invested around R$ 40 million in the last ten years to build our factories and now we are investing to add value to the fertilizer we produce,” said Gabriel Estevam Domingos, head of innovation at Ambipar, to IM Business.
According to the executive, the company is investing R$ 5 million in the construction of a factory in Paraná, which will produce organomineral fertilizers.
The idea is to add minerals already known to farmers to the organic fertilizer developed by the company.
The new unit is already under construction.
The company expects it to be operational within the next 12 months, with the arrival of the last equipment and the release of licenses by regulatory agencies.
Today, Ambipar has three biological fertilizer production units.
The oldest one is within Klabin’s unit in Paraná.
The other two are in São Paulo and Santa Catarina, where the company has partnerships with the American companies Sylvamo and WestRock.
Even with the additional supply of raw material that Klabin’s acquisition is expected to generate, Ambipar is looking for new partnerships.
According to Domingos, the company is already in talks with the Chilean CMPC – with a unit in Rio Grande do Sul – and with the Indonesian Bracell, with factories in São Paulo and Bahia.
Ambipar’s interest in the biological agricultural inputs market is not by chance.
In the last four years, the segment’s sales have grown 60% in Brazil, well above the global average of 15%.
In 2023 alone, the sector’s revenue grew by almost 50%, approaching R$ 4.5 billion.
The expectation is that it will reach R$ 17 billion by the end of this decade.
