Brasil BioFuels - BBF, a company that operates in agribusiness from the sustainable cultivation of oil palm in the northern region of the country - recovering degraded areas and helping to decarbonize the Amazon -, through the development of biofuels - presenting a green option for the population -, to the renewable energy sector - contributing to the energy transition and offering cleaner and cheaper energy, as well as improving the infrastructure around the places where it operates and helping local communities -, celebrates its achievements and growth in 2022. "It was a very important year for us. We put an unprecedented hybrid thermoelectric plant into operation in Roraima, expanded our areas of sustainable oil palm cultivation and achieved investment grade by Fitch Ratings. We have closed partnerships and taken important new steps, the fruits of which we will soon reap," said Milton Steagall, BBF's CEO.
One of the new steps to which he refers is the inauguration of a new soybean extruding plant in the municipality of Paragominas, located in the southeast of Pará. With the new plant, the group, which is already the largest palm oil producer in Latin America, continues to diversify its product portfolio and contributes to the socio-economic development of the northern region of the country. The company's objective with the new extruder is to supply the local demand for soybean meal for animal nutrition, as well as to lower the cost of the product in the state. Besides manufacturing its own line of products, BBF makes its structure available so that local producers can process their soybeans there.
BBF has always had ESG criteria among its business premises. In the environmental area, the company highlights the cultivation of new hectares of palm trees, recovering more forest areas degraded in the past and capturing carbon in the region; In the social factor, the assistance to family farmers - there are more than 400 families supported in the state of Pará - and investments in infrastructure, such as the construction of nine bridges, maintenance of more than 650 kilometers of local roads and a partnership with Vivo to expand the 4G coverage in the communities of Pará; and with regard to governance, the company achieved investment grade by Fitch Ratings with more than 2.1 billion invested in sustainable assets. "These are achievements very much linked to the company's purpose. Since the acquisition of Biopalma (a subsidiary of Vale) in 2020, we have become the largest palm oil producer in Latin America, and since then we have continued our journey of growth and innovation. This generated doubts about how our management was going to adapt within this reality of the company's performance, that is, how we would manage to walk in all directions, in an orderly and successful manner. We have shown that, yes, we are capable of growing and promoting innovation in the biofuels and renewable energy sectors. All the projects are happening," assured Steagall.
The year 2023 will also be special for the company, which is preparing to expand its current businesses and continue investing in new ones. The company will invest more than R$5 billion over the next three years to advance in second-generation renewable fuels, green chemistry, and corn ethanol. Among the highlights, the new biotechnology plant in the Amazon. BBF is developing a new line of renewable inputs for industries in the agricultural, cosmetics, food, and pharmaceutical segments, with the use of renewable raw materials to replace the use of petrochemical products. The launch is planned for this first quarter. "It will be something totally new for us. We are talking about raw materials produced from vegetable oils originated by BBF in the Amazon region and that will be used by several companies for the production of cosmetics, such as creams and lotions. These are steps that we know demand time and high quality control, fundamental for us to advance in new business fronts. We will make the novelties available to customers who wish to be part of this green product chain," said the CEO.
BBF's new "green chemistry" industry will have as its main raw material palm kernel oil, extracted from the nut of the oil palm fruit. "Palm kernel is present in 65 to 70% of the inputs we will produce. We wanted to understand this back then, if there was a possibility of working with it in a 100% renewable way and how big the challenge would be. And this is how this whole process started and was built, which was a lot of study and development", he said. Ten patents were registered for products related to green chemistry, whose objective is to substitute the use of petrochemical products in several sectors.
Another project that is already on the radar involves the development of the groundbreaking green diesel (HVO) and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) biofuels. The launch is planned for 2025, but the "behind the scenes" work is already happening. There is an ongoing process of agricultural expansion in Roraima for the HVO and SAF plants - by 2022, 10,000 hectares of planting have been added. "Labor hiring is imminent and growing month by month. Every month, as we expand our plantation, we add more employees. In this expansion, we have initially doubled the capacity of the palm crushing industry and invested in new equipment. The planted trees will already start producing fruit, so we have to be prepared for this to happen in an orderly fashion. All these steps we have programmed and are implementing little by little," said Steagall.
The production of ethanol from corn for the North region is also on the list of projects on the horizon for BBF, which is leading a pioneering initiative in this environment. The expectation is to produce more than 300 million liters annually and the official launch is planned for 2024. Currently, the company is in environmental licensing with two plants - one in the state of Roraima and the other in Rondônia. "I am very excited about the integrated project we have in Roraima, where we are already operating a hybrid thermoelectric plant powered by biomass and vegetable oil, both coming from the oil palm. In the future, corn bagasse may be burned to generate steam and thus also contribute as biomass to generate energy. The exhaustion of this steam will feed a corn ethanol plant, which will process the corn produced right there in the state. In Roraima, we already have the steam installed and priced by a thermoelectric plant, which makes the plant cheaper. This thermoelectric plant also has vegetable oil engines, so the corn oil itself that is extracted there can be consumed by machines that burn these vegetable oils to generate energy. It is a hybrid plant: part biomass, part vegetable oil", the executive detailed.
"In Roraima, 90% of the licensed vehicles are flex. That is, there is a big domestic market for ethanol, but today, for the product to get there, it is still very expensive. Producing it there will lower the cost of this ethanol for the population, besides being a more sustainable option. And the work with corn has no waste - it is fully used," he added.
"The main investments were around technology. The engineers, for the most part, are our actual hires, not temporary professionals, since we want to stay in the industry. It is important that the company stores all the intelligence that is being developed, otherwise we lose the ability to create. We decided to invest in building with these technicians, who are now an integral part within the BBF body. Structural issues were also very relevant. The reforms we did in the industrial parks in Pará, precisely in the assets we acquired from Vale, were very big. In the structure itself. All of this was done in 2022. Several projects received investments from the company in the last year. It was almost 600 million reais", Steagall reveals.
"The challenges are still big, but we have been showing the market that we can handle them. It will be a year of consolidation of BBF's new ventures, and we will continue to work following our purpose of contributing to the energy transition, recovering already degraded forest areas, and also doing our part to make the lives of local populations easier", he concluded.
