Ten years in charge of Suzano (which completed 99 years of activity on the last 22nd), executive Walter Schalka says that, in order to remain competitive, the company works to have a “startup face”. Suzano is the largest eucalyptus pulp manufacturer in the world. Questioned about Americanas’ financial shortfall, Schalka replies that the control of companies here is no less than abroad. “Brazil is no worse than the rest.” The following are excerpts from his interview with Estadão:
How to maintain competitiveness in an almost century-old company?
We want to look like a startup in the future. Therefore, each business has a high level of autonomy and growth strategy. We also have a corporate investment arm in startups. We seek new paths all the time, always delivering value to stakeholders. The capitalism of the past was profit-maximizing, period. Over time, this has been changing, and Suzano has incorporated this.
Do consumer-oriented products tend to have a greater share of business in the coming years?
We started the tissue business (products like toilet paper and paper towels) four years ago. Today, we are leaders in the North and Northeast. With the operation with Kimberly-Clark (the company bought the American operation in 2022), we will become the leader in São Paulo. The company always has the concept of planting a seedling, waiting for it to grow and give adequate results. When that happens, we expand. Four years ago, we entered the fluffy pulp business, which goes into diapers and pads. They said that short-fiber fluffy pulp could not exist in the world, that it was a 100% softwood business. We did tests and we thought it could be done. Today, the market wants to migrate to short fiber and we have no more capacity.
Suzano has always been very active in the ESG agenda. We are going through a moment when this G of ESG seems to be in check. How do you see the impact of the Americanas case on the market?
ESG was an acronym created for three fundamental things: environment, social and governance. Companies need to evolve in this. It is full of companies that do “green washing”. There’s an interesting meme of a person who is about 65 years old and says he’s going to stop drinking in 2050. It’s kind of like countries or companies that say they’re going to be zero carbon by 2050. A lot of companies want to throw this environmental problem out there forward. It’s the same thing in governance. Companies created criteria to reward executives based on performance. There are executives who try to find contours in the process to have a good performance and, therefore, a good remuneration. Each time there is a crisis like this, the controls are tightening.
But is Brazil falling short of control?
Do not. How many companies out there went bankrupt? How many ‘Enrons’ (an American giant in the energy sector that filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, after being the target of a series of accusations of accounting and tax fraud) went bankrupt? Multiple companies. Brazil is no worse than the rest. Brazil is perhaps on the frontline in this regard. Now, deviations unfortunately happen all over the world, and then people cannot generalize.
Does this harm the image of Brazilian companies?
I think it will naturally require a further level of verification in companies. It’s funny that the first question I received (after the Americanas case) was whether we carry out withdrawal risk (financial operation that, according to specialists, is at the origin of the retailer’s failure). It gives the impression that only drawn risk is a problem. We cannot globally rate companies, sectors or countries as bad.
The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
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