Norvinco: Special Packaging Solutions in Northeast Brazil

Interview with Jurg Hassenstein, President of Norvinco

Let’s start with the company. What does Norvinco do and what is the key competitive advantage that you can present to your clients?

Norvinco has been operating in the Northeast of Brazil for over 20 years. We are specialized in boxboard cases and in consulting for special packaging solutions. That is our core business. Our clients are national and international companies. They need very special specifications, different attention, so that’s what we do. We see that it’s very important, especially in the Northeast, that we have companies with a different kind of service, different kind of actions and reactions.

So what you bring is packaging along with a lot of consulting.

Yes, we start with a B to B selection and then we make visits and identify opportunities. Normally we make a critical analysis of the whole system and we offer a solution for companies that will bring them big returns, especially in terms of the environment.

Can you give us some examples of clients you have been working with?

Actually we have worked for Xerox (in Bahia). We make products for Honda (in Recife and Manaus), the Coca-Cola company and Spectrum Brands. Those are big companies that export the products outside of Brazil.

How do you see the company developing in the next three to five years?

We see big opportunities because we have registered some patents. Actually we do a lot of innovation. We have a big department specialized in innovative products so we can see that in the next years we will for sure triplicate our position in the market. That’s why we are always looking for new investments and opportunities.

Can you describe what kind of investments you need?

It could be a joint venture of knowledge or associations. We can say we are very well-situated with a good name in Brazil and we are a very serious company. So, a partner can have great opportunities to invest with us for future projects.

What are the main opportunities that you are seeing in this industry?

The inclusion of new social classes opens a lot of opportunities. We now have Class B, D, E, etc. So there are a lot of opportunities in services and innovations all over Brazil. The country is improving and the social classes are improving. There are more consumers and more products and therefore there will need to be more packaging. The growth will be tremendous.

But Brazil needs more workers with higher qualifications. Currently in Brazil, the median number of years of education is only 7 years compared with Europe which has 14 to 17 years. So you have to train those people which means more investments in education and schools.

What are Norvinco’s main challenges?

I think Brazil should do a lot of homework in the next years. We have good associations, affiliations, and organizations, but what we need next is an articulation between all those players. This is because there may be a lot of work done in parallel and a lot of wasted energy. So that has to change. We need investments in transportation, the fiscal system has to be much more active… And the public parks, now you see movements in Sao Paulo, the people start to control the productivity of the public parks, so you get “Nossa Sao Paulo” or “Rio Como Vamos” for example, that are kind of a bird observatory. If you control this, you will grow much faster. Jorge Gerdau is one of the big entrepreneurs who spends a lot of his time implanting the ballot score card system and strategic planning in many different states in Brazil. I think that’s a very important part of what we need to do in the future.

Also, maybe the entrepreneurs need to have a bigger role in social responsibilities and be active in this regard. We do work with junior achievement, an international non-profit organization. This year we brought 7,200 people from public schools to Alagoas, who were trained as entrepreneurs.

Why should investors come to Alagoas and not somewhere else? Why invest here?

I think that we are starting to get better opportunities. Our situation in the Northeast is very desirable. We are close to Recife and close to Europe. In 3 hours you are in Sao Paulo. So actually with the internet system, our clients work in Sao Paulo. There are connections everywhere so it doesn’t matter where you are, the knowledge is much more important. I think the demand will increase by four to five percent over the next years. The South is already more established so I think we can get these opportunities.

Is there anything else you would like to mention?

We talked already about public transport. That will be a really big opportunity for investors. People stay 2 hours in the car in Brazil so if you compare this to Europe or any other country, we need a big investment in this, including busses, trains, and connections.