Anuário da Indústria de Implementos Rodoviários 2018

34 noticed but that is also down to a need to change products after five years. What’s needed to turn the corner? Well, we are alive and, to a large extent, stable. Now that we’re getting more oxygen, the trend is to be better than six months ago, for example. The foundation has been remade, the culture has been rethought, the costs have been restructured, the strategies have been better defined, some portfolios have been revised and targeted more to the core business for each company. We have a more rational composition and, yes, a lot of work to be done to get to better days, to return to profitability. I think there is a new order in terms of operation, with companies understanding what size they have to be to start over. Is there a word that sums up the implements industry in 2018? Until now the word has been resilience. From now on I think it’s strategy. Show that we learn the lesson not to sell without margins, that we need to look for new markets, think about the world and not just Brazil, have a keener sense of costs and control momentum. Until when should you sell a product? Is it reasonable to be in March and sell until December? Will customers accept a variable price in the future? Do suppliers guarantee the price of steel until then? I know they don’t. That is, companies need to work more pragmatically and refine their strategies. We should also experience in the future a change in the profile of the business model for products. Those companies that have become smaller will opt for more objective portfolios for their vocation and the region where they work. Economically, 2018 has a downward curve for interest rates and when you think of five, ten years ahead, you don’t see an interest rate at that level, it tends to rise. It is a good time for using credit. What, then, is the size of the implements industry now and, at current macroeconomic parameters, what will it be in the coming years? Thinking forward ten years, I think that Brazil is a market of around 150,000 trucks a year, with heavy trucks accounting for approximately 40% to 50% of that .So, the implements industry rationally supports between 40,000 and 50,000 trailers and semi-trailers a year. At this level, we would not have so many problems. Can the sector live with 30,000? It can, and it did. Can it produce 60,000 or 70,000? It can, too, and did. But we will be well balanced, sustainable, with this level of 40,000 to 50,000 trailers and semi-trailers in the domestic market: we will occupy the factories and we will have an average ticket that justifies it. Above this floor and ceiling we began to move in margins. Above, for reasons of scale and the possibility of choosing the best deal, it increases. Below, it falls because of the need to fight more for business. What about the export market? It is still incipient, but there is a need for Brazil to position itself as a leader on the continent and even overseas, but in this case, because of logistics, the competition is more balanced. In Latin America, Brazil is the protagonist, this is where industry is. Argentina is also industrially organized, but comes after. The other markets do not have the know- how, structure or standardization. There is a brutal technological gap in these countries. Do exports still do not play a more important role because of a lack of export culture in the industry or competitiveness for Brazilian products due to price and logistics? A little bit of both. In these problems in Brazil we did not have time to look outside or dare to leave, mainly because it was difficult to do alone. Hence the importance of the agreement with Apex- Brasil, which helped companies to get into other markets and opened up horizons. As for the cost, not with regard to other exporting hubs but rather because of products without technology in the buyer markets I mentioned earlier. The high cost of freight makes the interest of the Chinese unfeasible, for example. The US industry has very different standards and products. What is the export potential for the implements industry? We are now exporting 5,000 to 6,000 trailers and semitrailers per year. But the entire continent, not counting Brazil and Argentina, will consume 10,000 to 15,000 units per year. I believe we could account for half of this and Argentina for 25 to 30%. The rest would be local products. And, in order to avoid high logistical costs, there is also the possibility of having our own small operations in those countries to assemble semi-assembled products sent from here .We would start to have regionalized operations - from one country, to serve neighbors - and be seen as a local industry by the competitors and customers. It was in this scenario that we convinced Apex to invest in our sector. ENTREVISTA | INTERVIEW | ENTREVISTA