Anuário da Indústria de Implementos Rodoviários 2020

38 ENTREVISTA | INTERVIEW | ENTREVISTA What do you make of ANFIR’s 40 years? We can say that we moved from a splintered sector, where each company was an individual market agent, into a strong industrial community. Today, as an entity, we represent the sector and we have the capacity to explain and advocate for the interests of the highway cargo transportation segment and its manufacturers in an organized manner, with society and at the most diverse levels of government. We have engaged actively in the modernization process and increased safety of road cargo transportation and boosted the value of our sector in the Brazilian economy. What are still the biggest obstacles to the development of the sector? The major obstacles to the development of the sector are outside it. The main one is the performance of the Brazilian economy that goes far beyond GDP, which evidently counts a lot. For companies in the sector, it is essential that other business segments of the Brazilian economy develop in a sustainable manner, so the industry can diversify sales, exploring more market segments and better sharing its revenues without concentrating its business in a single model of highway implement. That is why it is important to consistently expand construction, the food trade, consumer goods and urban services operations, such as garbage collection, to name a few examples, together with the agricultural sector, which in recent years has been the major driver of development for the highway implements industry. Can we say that the sector has become professional and skilled within what was expected or is there still room for improvement? Indeed, the sector today is professional and developed. There has been a great progress. But I believe that the progress must be continuous and manufacturing companies have not spared efforts to cope with this. And ANFIR is on the same track every day. Five years ago, for example, we did not think about having an export support program and today we have MoveBrazil with ApexBrasil. So, there is always room for improvement. Technologically, how would you define the implements industry in Brazil compared to hubs? We are on an equal footing with the best highway implement producing hubs in the world. Our technology and quality standards have followed that of developed countries, manufacturing products suitable for each country and market where we operate, both in terms of implements and auto parts. Our technology develops to streamline cargo transport while making it safer. ANFIR today has about 130 members and close to 900 other affiliated companies. What are the main differences between each category? An affiliated company is entitled to all the benefits that the entity provides, such as, for example, special price to join the Fenatran fair, participation in MoveBrazil and in the Mais Alimentos program, inquiring about its needs and doubts regarding the legislation and market practices, in addition to voting and being voted to join the ANFIR board. The affiliated company uses only the registration service at Renavam made by ANFIR. What remarkable fact would you highlight over these 40 years? I believe that the most striking facts are those linked to the oscillations of the economy. The worst, without a doubt, was the crisis, which lasted for almost four years and reduced our market to a third of what it was. Is it possible to imagine a return to the record highs of the beginning of the past decade? The recovery in the heavy line has already happened in 2019, returning to the levels of a normalized market. But the light line is still at a slower pace. In 2019, the Bodywork on chassis segment was around 60% of what it used to be. We believe that in 2020 the market for Trailers and N orberto Fabris, president of ANFIR, knows the implement industry like few others do. He joined the sector even before the entity, which he has led since 2018, was created and which has been overcoming, step by step, the impacts of the economic crisis that reduced the implements market, at a given moment, to almost a third of what it was. Therefore, learning about how the manager sees the current moment in the industry and ANFIR’s four decades is almost mandatory for businessmen in the sector to inform realities and, above all, expectations. Past and present are fertile ground for what you want to harvest in the future. Progress must be continuous