Sao Paulo, Oct 30 - After years of diversifying, Brazilian sugar and ethanol giant Cosan now plans to focus investments on expanding its existing business, the group's new chief executive said.
"Our focus will be here (in Brazil) in areas we're already in," said Marcos Lutz, who will take the top job at Cosan on Nov. 1.
The 39-year-old executive joined Brazil's largest sugar and ethanol group three years ago and was formerly a senior executive at CSN , one of Brazil's largest steelmakers.
Cosan became one of the most diversified sugar and ethanol companies after it acquired Exxon Mobil's fuel distribution assets in Brazil and branched out further by creating a logistics company and an agricultural real estate firm.
Lutz said plans previously announced by Cosan to invest in ethanol plants abroad and build mills in Brazil were not a top priority for now.
Instead, the company plans to expand, for example, the cogeneration of electric energy through burning of cane bagasse and leftovers at its mills, and invest in logistics.
"We have to get on with consolidating (our existing business units), keep the discipline of investing hard, bearing in mind our financial health as a priority, to face any turbulence," he said in a telephone interview.
"We'll see a big step towards the international market but I think this is not our focus for now," he said, adding, however, that minor investments in logistics overseas are possible in the short term.
The company recently overhauled its management structure and split up its business units into five divisions. The main one is production, which includes sugar and ethanol and the co-generation of energy.
Lutz also said Cosan may buy sugar and ethanol rivals but did not specify any potential targets.
The other four areas are food markets for sugar, fuel distribution, its real-estate unit Radar, which owns 60,000 hectares of farming land, and Rumo, a logistics firm that should soon be joined by a partner.
Brazil's sugar and ethanol industry has become more professionalized and has undergone consolidation in recent years, a process that intensified with the global financial crisis, which left many family-owned groups swimming in debt.
Earlier this week, Santelisa Vale, a company created in 2007 through the merger of two of Brazil's oldest sugar groups, was taken over by French giant Louis Dreyfus.
Within five years, Brazil's 10 largest sugar and ethanol groups should control 45 percent of the country's cane crush, up from 30 percent currently, according to analysts Datagro. Today there are 160 groups in the sector, with 430 plants.
Over the last few years, while many companies in the sector struggled with low sugar and ethanol prices and more recently, with credit constraints, Cosan saw its revenues multiply.
Its gross revenue jumped to 6.7 billion reais in the 2009 fiscal year, up from 2.7 billion reais in 2006, which was the year after Cosan's initial public offering on the Sao Paulo stock exchange.
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Rubens Ometto, who resigned this month as chief executive, was the only member of Cosan's founding family still working there. The firm mushroomed out of the Costa Pinto mill, which was founded by Ometto's grandfather in 1936.
Known in the sector as an aggressive business leader, Ometto led the company through one of the most vigorous expansion drives ever seen in Brazil's sugar industry.
Since 2000, Cosan has tripled the number of mills producing sugar and ethanol to 23. During this period, the company also started expanding its portfolio with the purchase of fuel distribution assets, among other acquisitions.
On Ometto's watch, Cosan became one of the first companies in Brazil to invest in port terminals, in the 1990s, when the government started privatizing the sector.
Ometto's resignation as CEO -- he remains as the chairman of the board -- does not change the company's plans for further growth, Lutz said.
"Rubens built a company of this size and now he sees that he can do more to improve the company's quality by taking care of strategical issues. Day-to-day business at the company is now a lot more demanding," Lutz said.
"This was not an overnight decision, it was something awaited and planned for a long time," said Lutz, adding that a professional board of directors was set up years ago.
Lutz said the sector's consolidation will favor Cosan. Fewer and stronger companies would be better positioned to invest in infrastructure, reduce barriers in the global sugar market and help in the development of ethanol markets abroad.
"If you ask me if I would rather to compete with 10 firms the size of Cosan, I would say yes, absolutely," Lutz said.