SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL — Pavan Zanetti, one of the Brazilian market's top producers of injection and blow molding machines, displayed new models and renewed confidence in Brazilian demand bouncing back this year after two straight years of sales declines.
Pavan Zanetti enjoyed a sales record in 2010 of 67 million Brazilian real ($32.9 million), but experienced sales declines in 2011 and 2012 to "pre-crisis" 2008-09 figures, said Newton Zanetti, commercial director.
Strong sales in 2010 were driven by one of the lowest interest rate programs in Brazilian history offered by the National Development Bank (BNDES) in 2009 and 2010, which led to a market saturation for machinery in 2011, Zanetti said.
The near stagnant growth of Brazil's economy in 2012, during which gross domestic product rose just 0.9 percent, froze growth and development budgets across many industries.
But the country's expanding middle class, diverse economy and higher exports this year led Standard & Poor's in April to project real GDP growth of 2.5 percent in 2013, and 3.25 percent in 2014, and Brazil's federal government has predicted an even higher growth rate.
Despite more foreign players establishing sales or production subsidiaries for blow molding machinery in Brazil over the past two years, Zanetti is optimistic that 2013 machinery sales will rebound to the level of 2010, or better.
Pavan Zanetti recently invested $8 million in building and moving to a new headquarters and factory in Americana, São Paulo, through a seven-year loan from BNDES. The move was completed in February 2012, with total usable space nearly doubling from the old property to 13,000 square meters, of which 10,000 square meters is factory floor space.
The company also won the "TOP National Equipment" award in the blow-molding category for the eighth consecutive year in 2012 from Brazilian industry magazine Plásticos em Revista, in its annual survey of producers, distributors, raw material resalers and transformers in the Brazilian plastics sector.
Pavan Zanetti debuted a PET blow molder at Feiplastic, the Petmatic 4C/2L, a second-generation model in the series and first to serve up to 5,000 bottles of size 500 ml per hour, with a size range of up to 2 liters. The company said the all-electric model has improved speed, precision and energy efficiency.
Also introduced was the HXF 780, an injection press with 780 metric tons of clamping force. The company is marketing the model as highly versatile.
