Global Courant 2023-05-20 21:00:27
Laboratories, oil companies and other energy firms are revolutionizing the sector. Argentina has already fallen behind compared to neighboring countries. Will he be able to get on that train now?
Although the trees do not grow to the sky, in Argentina they do so at great speed. And that is a great advantage in a world that, hit by climate change, needs to capture the carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere. These natural conditions allow cutting periods from 9 to 15 years when in the Nordic countries it goes from 30 to 45 years.
This is an opportunity so far missed, if one translates what is happening in neighboring Uruguay with its third pulp mill. Or Paraguay, which inaugurates its first factory after a disbursement of US$ 3,200 million from Paracel, of Swedish and Paraguayan capital. And the news is that it will have Argentine raw material and will return it processed.
Brazil, to cite another case, has invested US$ 25 billion in the last 15 years and Chile is already on its third cellulosic pulp plant.
Investments passed by
Of course, it cannot be considered discrimination against Argentina. Quite simply, the economic instability caused the investments to pass by. But in the sector they do not lower their arms. They joined in Confiar (Argentine Industrial Forestry Council) that links all the links of that long industrial chain, from the plantation to the final product, including machinery manufacturers.
Claudia Peirano, executive director of Afoa.
The country has 1.3 million hectares of forest plantations and 53.6 million hectares of native forests, with another 3.7 million hectares available to expand plantations that do not compete with native forests or crops.
And a lot of this is looking at new players. In the last year, oil companies such as Vista de Miguel Galuccio have used forest plantations as a lever to offset the carbon dioxide emissions of their activity. And laboratories like the Swiss Novartis are on the same path.
Precisely 100 kilometers around Virasoro Corrientes, in the heart of Mesopotamia, there is already talk of the largest basin for the forestry industry in the world.
Claudia Peirano, one of the biggest references in the sector, highlights the investment of the Belgian Akon Timber in Virasoro, which accounts for 6 hectares of sheds and a bioenergy plant.
the opportunity is now
The Miguens-Bemberg, Escasany and Reca families join the purchase, with ambitious plans, of Central Puerto, which added the 88,000 hectares of forests owned by Harvard University. “Finland and Canada are very interested,” adds Peirano. “The opportunity is enormous,” says Claudio Terres de Ledesma, who clarifies that trees must be planted in the right place,
General view of the Finnish UPM plant (formerly Botnia)
He exemplifies with the eucalyptus that if it is in areas with 800 millimeters of annual precipitation, it does not compromise the groundwater. Furthermore, wood fiber appears on the horizon because it is biodegradable as the natural replacement for plastic. “It is the green cow of Argentina,” says Osvaldo Vassallo, another sector leader.
This industry employs some 50,000 people and the furniture sector, according to Mercedes Omeñuka, is hit after the strong demand in times of pandemic. There is plenty of stock here and in the world.
Added to this are the inconveniences due to the lack of critical inputs that come from abroad, such as various chemicals, resins, salts to impregnate wood, spare parts for machinery, the essential fabric for making paper, and furniture fittings.
Put to think towards 2030, at Confiar they designed a possible project that consists of increasing the area with forest plantations by 50% and bringing it to 2 million hectares, creating 180,000 jobs and raising exports to 2,500 million dollars annually. Of course, that requires investments of US$ 7,000 million. I hope I see the light.
