Anuário da Indústria de Implementos Rodoviários 2020

27 a consolidated basis, which indicates that we may have a very good year for the highway implements industry,” says Fabris. While recent years were about recovery, they also served for the improvement and fine-tuning of activities, professionalization of the companies themselves and the sector’s executives. “The crisis was the most expensive consultancy that the industry could have had,” says Alcides Braga, whose second term as president of ANFIR, from 2015 to 2018, coincided exactly with the most poignant period of the Brazilian economic crisis and for the implement market. In 2016, 60,500 implements were sold, 38% of what the sector had recorded just two years before. Even so, efforts in this period to prepare the segment for the potential resumption of demand prevailed, while increasing the sector’s representativeness, a continuous process since the association’s emergence. For no other reason, over 40 years, it gained a name to the point of being integrated into discussions with other societies and public authorities on projects, the drafting of technical standards and laws, and to any other relevant aspects of traffic and safety in highway implements. This guideline was included in the entity’s foundation meeting, attended by representatives from Biselli, Cabrini, Cargo-Van, Dambroz, FNV-Fruehauf, Furglas, Guerra, Iderol, Krone, Randon, Recrusul, Rodoviária and Trivelatto. The same objective of participating in important decisions for the segment and the entire transport sector guided the move of ANFIR’s headquarters to São Paulo, just one year after its foundation. After all, Greater São Paulo not only concentrated other related entities, but, as the largest economic centre in the country, it was also the epicentre of road transport. This proximity to the consumer market, entities and the government was essential for the implements industry to be ultimately recognized as an important link in road freight transport. Mário Rinaldi, executive director at ANFIR, recalls that, until then, despite all the efforts, the sector was little known beyond component companies in the automotive industry. “The perception, even in some areas of the government, was that truck manufacturers also made bodies. The vehicle was seen as a whole,” recalls Rinaldi, who saw this distortion as an obstacle for the segment, with even greater difficulties to get financing or government incentives, common to other sectors. The greater representativeness also implied the diversity of purposes and duties over the years. It was, and still is, one of the first items on ANFIR’s agenda, for example, the continuous improvement of the safety of the implements, whether for truck drivers and passengers, or for other car drivers and pedestrians. This has put the entity in the spotlight. So much so that ANFIR started to interact, advise, be part of or have a seat at bodies that were once distant benchmarks, such as the ABNT, the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards, with the CB-39 - Brazilian Committee for Road Implements, which studies the standards, the Thematic Chamber of Vehicle Affairs of the National Traffic Council (Contran). It is noteworthy that this effort to advocate for safety, at times, could imply even, up front, higher costs for its own members. Due to rules, some suggested by the entity, the implements now have, for example, an ABS system for brakes, side and rear protections that prevent cars, motorcycles, bicycles and people from being projected under the vehicles in the event of a crash. Being closer to government agencies also meant having an office in Brasilia (Federal District), which was opened in 2012. As an example, in 2015, a partnership was entered into with Apex-Brasil, the Brazilian Export Promotion Agency. Move-Brazil was this set up - the International Expansion Program for the Highway Implements Industry - not only to expand and diversify the export marke, but, above all, to validate an export culture among implements manufacturers. Since then, dozens of them have maintained business, won clients or initiated deals abroad, which, to some extent, pose or will pose as an important outlet for the limitations of the domestic market at a given time. But the return of a more consistent export activity, emphasizes Fabris, is not immediate. Exports depend on lasting, long-term performance. They are the result of an easier process to be developed and implemented with maturity. The one that has just arrived in the implement industry and its main representative, the forty-year-old ANFIR.