Mahogany starts project with more than U$ 130 million in Roraima

Founded by entrepreneur Marcello Guimarães, who has made a career in technology, Mahogany Roraima has developed a project that, if all goes well, will lead to the planting of about 40,000 hectares of African mahogany in the country’s North State over the next ten years, which will require contributions of nearly R$ 500 million (+U$ 130 million).

Known for the creation of Visual Kit 5, which was one of Brazil’s best selling softwares, Guimarães arrived in Boa Vista in 2012. He raised pigs and cattle before betting on African mahogany, and is now accelerating the planting of new trees on land partners.

“We have recently completed the planting of 600 hectares in four days, and we are negotiating land with landowners in the region to increase the pace,” he told Valor. According to him, the project has been financed with the Forestry Replacement Credits that your company obtains with the planting and sells to those who need to compensate for deforestation.

According to Guimarães, the credits have been sufficient to finance investments of R$ 6 thousand per hectare, but the total cost for planting the area reaches R$ 17 thousand, and the trees only begin to be cut – and, therefore, to generate revenue – in 12 years.

“We are negotiating with investors from Brazil and abroad, but this is an always complex courtship,” he jokes. Meanwhile, he says, Mahogany has made agronomic agreements with Embrapa and universities and has been developing machinery to optimize planting work.

After sailing for 35 years in the waves of technology, Guimarães, with the African mahogany, affirms that it returns to the origins. Son of Marília Guimarães, a guerrilla who in 1970, with him and his younger brother, participated in the hijacking of an airplane and was exiled in Cuba, Marcello studied in an agricultural school on the island of Fidel Castro.

With its project in Roraima, it is eyeing a market that yields EUR 400 per cubic meter of African mahogany – whose average productivity reaches about 150 cubic meters per hectare – and could generate for the company an annual turnover between R$ 300 and R$ 400 million after sales start.

Access the news on the website that published it (in Portuguese): https://www.valor.com.br/agro/6316359/mahogany-inicia-projeto-de-r-500-milhoes-em-rr