Balls' Nuffield Trip: On to Brazil

Yeh !!! Brazil at last but no, another lost bag. Rowan was left with only his back pack again. He had his Aussie flag board shorts. They should do. Off to our hotel and put our feet up for the rest of the day. Sao Paulo has 20+ million people and they are crammed in. I went in search of a post office and spent an hour walking around and half an hour trying to tell them what I wanted. In the end it was all sorted out. . It has a better feel about it than Mexico City, but it is hard to tell from one day.

Rowan Contemplating His Lost Bag

We had a good night’s sleep and it was go for the Brazil leg of the GFP. We went to the Austrade Office in Sao Paulo to meet the Consul General and the head of Austrade in Brazil. Greg Wallis gave us a good heads with Brazil and the current economic, social and agricultural climate.

Brazil is a huge country with 4 million square kilometres. The country has the 8th largest economy with $1.7 trillion GDP. It per capita GDP is $8200. It’s inflation is a little bit high, with 4.4%. The population of Brazil is close to 200 million.

As far as agriculture goes this country is a power house. It is the world’s producer of products;

• 1st for Sugar, Coffee and Orange Juice.

• 1st for Beef and Chicken exports.

• 2nd for Soy production and Ethanol production.

With mining, they are the largest producer of iron ore and 5th for copper.

As for Australian imports they are 22nd for value to us. Greg also stated that over the last few year there has been an average of 22,000 Brazilian student studying in Australia. Tania -------- who is the Business Development Manager at Austrade said there are currently opportunities in some of the high end agricultural products, such as fine cheese,dairy products, Olive Oil, fine biscuits and chocolate. This was quite interesting in this selection and both Greg and Tania told us that Brazil had come through the GFC very well and there are a large number of people in the ‘A’ category with lots of disposable income to spend on high value goods. All of the demographers use a pyramid shape to describe the people of Brazil. The catergories A B C D E are based on your income and assets.

It is not easy to import your product and be competitive. The government has tariffs on imported goods ranging from 14-20%. A bottle of the humble Jacobs Creek wine sells for $54 Real. This converts to around $34 Aussie. There were a number of $20 bottles back home in the range of $70 - $80 Real. Real is the Brazilian dollar with a conversion of $Aus1 to $Bra1.60.

A $10 Aussie Bottle of Good BBQ Red

We met Andy Duff from Rabobank and he gave us a banks perspective on Brazilian agriculture. They have 12 branches spread mainly across the central region and central west of Brazil. He gave us a SWOT analysis of Brazilian agriculture and the main weakness of the system was the lack of infrastructure. It creates huge bottle necks

We had an afternoon tour of Sao Paulo with Rosanna. The Markets were excellent