By Lloyd Graff
Probably the hottest market in the world for machined parts right now is Brazil. By one account I’ve heard Brazil is using more cold finished bars in the tonnage than the United States. They are even importing some such material from the States. The big headache in dealing with the land of the Bossa Nova is bureaucracy and paperwork. It still takes a visa to enter the country.
But Brazil is swinging. Romi’s offer for Hardinge Corporation is a wakeup call to other people in the hemisphere that the Brazilians are serious people. They have an aircraft business, it’s the automotive center of South America, they have enormous iron ore deposits and now possess a major oil find offshore. Rio getting the 2016 Olympics is recognition that Brazil is here as a world power. Even the Avon lady agrees. The company estimates that 60 million Brazilians have joined the “middle class” in the last decade.
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Don’t forget that it was Brazilians who formed AMBEV, turned it into IMBEV and then snatched A-B to form AB-INBEV–now one of the world’s largest consumer product companies. Impressive!