Minerva Foods, the largest beef exporter in South America, announced it became the first company in the segment to monitor 100% of its cattle suppliers in Paraguay.
In the Paraguayan Chaco, Minerva claims to have more than 3,000 supplier farms. In the region, it already has 11.8 million hectares mapped through the SMGeo system, developed by NicePlanet Geotechnology based on satellite images.
In Brazil, the company has been monitoring its direct suppliers since 2020 and is now concentrating efforts and technologies to broaden its focus on indirect suppliers. Controlling the practices of indirect suppliers has proved to be the biggest challenge for meatpackers in the country, but Minerva Foods has also obtained positive results on this front.
As already reported by Valor, in an audit carried out from January 2018 to June 2019, the Federal Prosecution Service of Pará attested that no cattle purchased by the company in the state in the period came from areas with illegal deforestation after 2008 or overlapping indigenous lands and units of conservation, of properties embargoed by Ibama or without Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) and of farms with labor analogous to slavery.
Adding up the Brazilian and Paraguayan biomes, the area monitored by the company totals 26 million hectares. And the goal for the coming years is to reach 100% coverage in the other South American countries where it operates. In Colombia, where it has more than 3 thousand direct suppliers, the goal is 2023; in Uruguay (1.8 thousand suppliers), 2025; and in Argentina (1.5 thousand suppliers), 2030.
In the region’s neighbors, Minerva’s businesses are gathered in the subsidiary Athena Foods, which in the third quarter of last year earned R$4.4 billion, an amount that represented 56% of the Brazilian company’s total gross revenue.
Added to all operations, exports usually represent around 70% of Minerva’s business, which accounts for around 20% of South American beef shipments.
In general, Minerva’s efforts are in line with its goals of eliminating illegal deforestation in its supply chain by 2030 and of achieving zero net carbon emissions by 2035. In this work, planned investments are on the order of R$1,5 billion.
Source: Valor International