Ultra celebrates 80 years G4-1
Our trajectory is marked by our commitment to safety, the environment, quality and excellence, as well as our passion for our customers characteristics that Oxiteno and other Ultra businesses have helped to consolidate over time. With 80 years of recently completed history, Ultra has a management model focused on value generation, which seeks to constantly engage our employees and has in sustainability one of the main guiding elements of our strategic and operational actions.
The year 2017 was marked by a slow recovery of economic activity in Brazil, after two years of deep recession, a context that affected not only Ultra but other Brazilian companies from the most different sectors of the economy. Still, we achieved another year of consistent results, with revenue growth across our business. Ultra's consolidated revenue increased 3% to US$ 25 billion.
Oxiteno helps to design our business globally, reaching markets in Latin America, the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia.
Oxiteno contributed to the good performance of Ultra with a record growth of 7% in sales and net revenue. Part of this result is due to the premarketing movement in the United States in preparation for the start-up of the new Pasadena plant in the state of Texas expected to occur in 2018. The new site will allow us to compete with even more effectiveness in the country, today the largest market for surfactants in the world.
We are sure that innovation is the recipe for Oxiteno's success. This focus makes it possible to identify and offer specific solutions for each customer, improves the performance of the final products and guarantees the highest level of safety and the lowest socio-environmental impact. In 2017, of the US$ 145 million invested in Oxiteno, US$ 16 million was directed to research and development.
In this Sustainability Report, we invite you to know these and other highlights of Oxiteno, a company whose portfolio is employed in items of the most distinct segments, all of which are present in the daily lives of people, who are the customers of our clients and with whom we are equally committed.
Frederico Curado
CEO of Ultra
More efficiency and generation of socio-environmental value G4-1
We achieved important results in 2017, essential to evolve our strategies for internationalization and strengthening our operations in Brazil, in line with the main objective of making Oxiteno a leader in the manufacture of surfactants and their applications.
In 2017, we celebrate ten years of the operation in the United States. Serving the customers of this market has been a challenge that has already resulted in new partnerships in North America. To leverage our operations on the continent, we have focused efforts to complete the construction and installation of the new alkoxylation plant in Pasadena, Texas, with a production capacity of 170,000 tons per year. The site has started its operation in 2018, and manufactures products that began to be sold in 2017 in the region, thanks to a pre-marketing action, which sought to ensure the structuring of sales channels and the conquest of the market. The strategy was supported by the operations of Camaçari (Brazil), Mauá (Brazil), Santa Rita (Venezuela), Tremembé (Brazil), Suzano (Brazil), Guadalajara (Mexico) and Coatzacoalcos (Mexico).
10
years of operation in the United States
We recognize the leading role of our employees in the good performance of the company. 80% of the new management positions were occupied by professionals who were already part of Oxiteno.
We have also conducted a restructuring of our operational model, Project Evolution, which covers Oxiteno's international and regional governance. The reorganization of our governance structure aims to increase the regional focus of the operations, not compromising global optimizations, adding value to the relationship with customers and the innovation process, topics relevant to us and fundamental for the future we design for the business.
Attention to innovation resulted in 19 patents deposited and 29 products launched in 2017 - Oxiteno's current portfolio brings together 530 products, all of them developed from safety, quality and performance assumptions. Our research and development (R & D) process is also focused on the adoption of raw materials from renewable sources, care for the environment and the promotion of health and well-being, guidelines that integrate Greenformance – our concept of sustainability.
In the productive process, the initiatives sought to combine efficiency gains, cost reduction and environmental impacts. We continue to invest in certifications for all oursites, which contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the quality of the management processes of our operations, as well as to promote safe behavior among all employees, continually engaging them in important aspects of the environment, health and safety.
We broaden our engagement with the global agenda each year to increase our contribution to the generation of value to society. We correlate our relevant sustainability topics (also called material topics) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (see pages). Our practices to promote water efficiency and management of greenhouse gas emissions have been recognized by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in the past two years. About 15% of the water consumed in the processes of our plants in Brazil comes from reuse and we avoid the emission of almost 71 thousand tons of CO2 equivalent in 2017 with practices to reduce emissions and transform these gases into an energy source.
We recognize the leading role of our team for the good performance of the company. No wonder, 80% of the management positions created in 2017 were occupied by professionals who were already part of Oxiteno. Equally fundamental are our suppliers and business partners, with whom we have built our value chain over the years. The distributors' management plan, for example, has been adding improvements in the distribution of products, consolidating sales channels and supporting our customers in their business strategies with agility and quality.
We have remained committed to establishing partnerships for the development of the regions where we are present. In addition to contributing to the growth of other industries, we want to boost the local market and generate value to the community.
All these initiatives contributed to the results achieved in 2017. Sales volume grew 7%, a record volume in commodities as well as the volume sold in pre-marketing to the United States due to the new site and growth in the domestic market. On the other hand, the average price of the Real, 9% more appreciated, mitigated, in parts, these effects.
Our results and initiatives are regularly disseminated among our employees, suppliers, clients, communities and other publics, as part of a process that aims to add transparency to the relationship we maintain with all of them and of which the Sustainability Report is an essential part. In the following pages, we share with you, the reader, the main advances and challenges of our company in 2017.
Good reading!
João Benjamin Parolin
Oxiteno's Superintendent Director