Grupo BBF completes 15 years of investment in the North

Today, Grupo BBF has more than 6,000 direct employees and generates 18,000 indirect jobs in its operations in the five Amazonian states.
April 05, 2023
Image of a grupo BBF worker harvesting palm oil

The BBF Group, which operates in sustainable agribusiness from the cultivation of oil palm, biotechnology, biofuel production and renewable energy generation, completes 15 years this April with a growth projection of over 36% this year. The company has assets in Acre, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia and Roraima, and is one of the largest employers in the North region. The BBF Group has today more than 6 thousand direct employees and generates 18 thousand indirect jobs in its operations in the five Amazonian states.

In 2020, the company experienced a leap in growth with the acquisition of Biopalma, a subsidiary of Vale, in Pará, expanding its oil palm cultivation area by 60,000 hectares and operating two more palm oil production plants. "Our businesses are long-term assets and reinforce our commitment to the best environmental, social and governance practices," says Grupo BBF CEO Milton Steagall.

Currently, the Group has more than 75 thousand hectares cultivated with oil palm in the states of Pará and Roraima. Every year, more than 200,000 tons of palm oil are produced by the company, which maintains a vertical business model, in which it is possible to operate from the planting of oil palm, the production of biofuels, biotechnology, and renewable electric energy.

In the energy sector, Grupo BBF 's portfolio includes 38 thermoelectric plants with a total generating capacity of 238 MW, serving isolated locations in the northern region. There are 25 plants in operation with 86.8 MW of power generation capacity and another 13 under implementation. All of them run on renewable fuels: biofuels (biodiesel and vegetable oil) and biomass from oil palm.

The company generates renewable energy for local distributors, serving more than 140,000 customers, removing around 106 million liters of fossil diesel from the Amazon, as well as reducing emissions by around 250,000 tons of carbon equivalent in the Amazonian atmosphere. Last year, the company was rated investment grade by Fitch Ratings, with a positive outlook for the long term. In total, Grupo BBF has more than R$2.1 billion invested in sustainable assets.

Clear business assumptions

Grupo BBF follows the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria among its business premises. In the environmental pillar, the company stands out for expanding sustainable oil palm cultivation in the states of Pará and Roraima, recovering forest areas that were degraded in the past and capturing more than 463,000 tons of carbon annually in the region. In addition, the company has more than 60,000 hectares of Permanent Preservation Area (APP) and Legal Reserve (RL).

In the social area, in addition to the program to encourage family farmers, there are also investments in infrastructure for communities living around its operations: in 2022 alone, Grupo BBF invested in the construction of nine bridges, the maintenance of more than 650 km of side roads and a partnership with Vivo to expand 4G coverage in northeastern Pará.

In terms of governance, last year the company was rated investment grade by Fitch Ratings, with a positive outlook for the long term. In all, Grupo BBF has more than R$2.1 billion invested in sustainable assets.

Program encourages 400 family farmers in Pará

In Pará, the company employs more than 5,000 direct employees and maintains the Family Farming Program, which encourages more than 400 farmers. In 2022, the Program's partner families delivered more than 37,000 tons of oil palm, which generated revenue of more than R$ 30 million for family farmers.

The Family Farming Program encouraged by Grupo BBF includes the supply of seedlings, barter for the purchase of fertilizers at affordable prices, technical assistance from experts in oil palm cultivation, help with bank loans, incentives for continuous improvement and guaranteed purchase of the fruit at competitive prices. In 2022 alone, the amount of technical assistance provided in the field by the company exceeded 2,000 visits.

"The sustainable development of the region is urgent. It is necessary to make viable ways to keep the forest standing, but also to offer employment, income, and socioeconomic development," observes Steagall. The sustainable cultivation of the oil palm, according to him, is a very interesting alternative environmentally and economically. This is because it is a plant that is cultivated in previously degraded areas, which follows the Oil Palm Agroecological Zoning, based on the Federal Government's decree 7172, which positions the country as the one that has one of the strictest legislations in this area, allowing the planting only in areas deforested up to December 2007. "It is a perennial crop and its cultivation cannot be mechanized, which keeps labor in the field. Besides, oil palm has high carbon capture from the atmosphere", says the CEO.

Solutions for areas such as cosmetics and food

This year the company expanded its product portfolio. With investments of R$ 33 million, BBF BioTech, a business unit focused on biotechnology, started operations in Rondônia to produce renewable inputs from palm and palm kernel oil, serving several industries in the agricultural, cosmetics, food, cleaning and pharmaceutical segments. Altogether, the plant has the capacity to produce more than 3 thousand tons per month of renewable inputs.

The new product line, called "AmazonBio Care", aims to replace the use of petrochemical products with renewable raw materials. The investment in research and development has generated results - in 2022, BBF filed 11 patents with the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), related to the new solutions for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, cleaning, food, agriculture and biofuels areas. The company has established partnerships with the main research institutions in the country, such as the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), University of São Paulo (USP) and Technological Research Institute (IPT).

"Our aim is to promote innovation in the biotechnology sector by developing renewable inputs to replace petrochemicals, using vegetable oils grown by Grupo BBF in the Amazon region," says Steagall.

Scheduled for the end of 2025, Grupo BBF will start producing the unprecedented Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and Green Diesel, also known as Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). The raw material for the biofuels will be palm oil produced by the company in the interior of Roraima. Refining will take place at a plant under construction in the Manaus Free Trade Zone (AM). The new plant will be the first biorefinery in the country to produce the unprecedented biofuels on an industrial scale.

Initially, it will be possible to produce 500 million liters annually of the groundbreaking HVO and SAF biofuels.

TO UNDERSTAND

The Company

The company was founded in April 2008 by entrepreneurs who shared the aim of changing the energy matrix of the Isolated Systems in the North of Brazil and, at the same time, creating jobs, generating income and reducing the cost of electricity for the population, based on a sustainable and clean matrix, replacing the use of fossil diesel oil with biodiesel produced from palm oil.

l Since then, Grupo BBF has expanded its operations to contribute to the country's energy transition by producing biofuels for other purposes as well, and has established itself as the largest palm oil producer in Latin America.

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