Brazil: More than 210 cities competing to house new Heineken brewery

More than 210 cities in Brazilian state Minas Gerais entered the competition to house the new Heineken factory, as the company gave up on installing a production unit in Pedro Leopoldo, in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (RMBH), at the end of last year, PlayCrazyGame.com reported on January 28.

With the “race”, a lot of expectation was created to know which municipality will be chosen to receive the new installation of the brewery. The suspense is nearing its end.

By the end of February, Heineken should announce the location chosen in Minas Gerais to receive the new plant, which will have investments of R$ 1.8 billion, with an estimated production of 760 million litres per year, with capacity to meet the entire the Southeast region. Although more than two hundred cities have entered the “race”, in the next 15 days the list should get smaller, with the municipalities classified for the “final stretch” of the dispute for the industry.

The information was released on January 28 by the Secretary of State for Economic Development, Fernando Passalio, in Montes Claros, in the north of Minas, when he participated in a meeting with businessmen from the city’s “Exchange Club”. He gave a lecture on investments in Minas Gerais and the measures adopted by the State Government to attract new ventures, especially with regard to eliminating bureaucracy and streamlining environmental licenses.

Passalio confirmed that more than 210 cities in Minas have applied to receive the new venture, also remembering that the brewery has made a commitment to maintain the investment in the state.

“We are helping the company to capture proposals and send them so that the company can have the freedom, within the technical criteria defined by it, (to choose) where it will build (install) a new plant”, said the state secretary of Economic Development. “The announcement should be made by the end of February,” revealed Passalio.

Among the more than 210 cities that entered the bid for the new Heineken plant, there are municipalities in the various regions of Minas Gerais, including Juiz de Fora, a hub city in the Zona da Mata, the historic Mariana and Ouro Preto (Central Region), Pirapora, located on the banks of the So Francisco River, in the North of Minas; Santa Rita do Sapuca, in the south of the state; Frutal, Patrocnio and Uberaba, in Tringulo.

But which cities are most likely to win the dispute for the new industry? For now, this information is kept under lock and key. Representatives of the State Government avoid making any disclosure or comment on which municipalities are most likely to host the brewery. They claim that the State Government only forwarded the information provided by interested Heineken municipalities, and that only the company has the final word on the choice.

On the other hand, the secretary Fernando Passalio let slip that, within the next 15 days, a “smaller list of municipalities that are in the final stretch” should be released, after a first screening among the more than 210 cities that entered the race for the project. .

Passalio said that Heineken defined some criteria for municipalities to apply to receive the new brewery, including: availability of land with a minimum area of 150 hectares, “having a river nearby with a minimum flow that they (the company) determine” and also aspects related to logistics and labor. “There are several factors that they put that will serve and will weigh in the choice,” said the state secretary for Economic Development.

Heineken announced the abandonment of the installation of the new industry in Pedro Leopoldo in December, after facing environmental problems. The brewery project in the city generated controversy, because the facilities would be in a region close to the archaeological site where the skull of ‘Luzia’, the oldest human fossil in the Americas, was found.

Upon announcing the cancellation of plans for Pedro Leopoldo, the group’s director of Corporate Affairs in Brazil, Mauro Homem, assured that the company would maintain the project for a new plant in Minas Gerais.

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