Page 42 - Minerva Foods | Annual Report 2017

Operational
PERFORMANCE
In 2017, Minerva Foods promoted the largest ex- pansion of its operations in 25 years, becoming the largest in natura exporter in South America, accounting for 22% of shipments of the region. Acquisition of nine meatpacking units in Para- guay, Uruguay and Argentina, where a processed foods unit and a distribution center were also purchased, reactivation of the Mirassol D’Oeste (MT) unit and better domestic and foreign sales resulted, in a slaughter volume of over 2 million head of cattle by the end of 2017, growing by 30.2% above the previous year. The Company’s capacity utilization of installed equipment rose to 74.5%, that is, 6.1 percentage points (p.p.) over the rate reported the previous year.
See the GRI Appendix for the number and percentage of animals raised and/or processed, by species and raising method.
At the same time that it was promoting its op- erational expansion, the Company made prog- ress on one of its main goals: conclusion of the integration process for new units located in Mer- cosul. 42 Under this task, most of the stages to integrate operational systems and procedures,
commercial and logistic in Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina had already been completed. Par- aguay and Uruguay are already fully operating under the new standard, and in Argentina, the plan is to finalize integration in April 2018. At the same time, implementation of the risk man- agement instruments (Beef Desk, Choice Meet- ing and Pricing) has already been concluded at the new units in Paraguay, Uruguay and Argen- tina. During the period, Minerva has remained focused on lowering the need for working capi- tal and consequently improving the cash conver- sion cycle of the new business units.
Even with integration moving forward, the new units had a higher participation in the results and, as a consequence, other commercial oppor- tunities arose, serviced by the distribution chan- nels, tradings and international offices. In 2017, the Company remained among the top three ex- porters in the countries where it maintains oper- ations. In Brazil, its market share reached 19%; in Paraguay, it reached 29%, 9 p.p. higher com- pared to the previous year; in Uruguay, a par- ticipation of 15%, in line with 2016; Argentina,
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