Recently Fibria laid the foundation stone for its Seedling Production Unit, located in Helvécia, a district in the municipality of Nova Viçosa (Bahia State). The total investment is expected to amount to around R$ 30 million and the forest nursery will be able to produce 30 million cloned eucalyptus seedlings a year. When operational, it will generate 250 jobs.
Following its policy of giving preference to local workers, Fibria, in partnership with the branches of SENAI (National Industrial Training Service) and SENAR (National Rural Training Service) in Bahia, opened courses in 2008 for the training of forest nursery and building workers.
More than 700 people (men and women), from four communities in the municipalities of Nova Viçosa and Caravelas, have benefited from these courses and qualified for the job market. To participate in the courses, the first requirement was to be a resident of Helvécia, Juerana, Nova Esperança or Cândido Mariano, thereby ensuring that priority would be given to local inhabitants. "Soon, many of these professionals will be chosen to work on the construction of the Seedling Production Unit", Fibria’s forest nursery expert, Valeriano Cancela da Conceição, affirmed.
The seedling production activities and hiring of staff for the nursery should begin in July 2011. According to Zoé Donati, general manager of Forest Planning and Development at Fibria, hundreds of jobs will be created in the operational phase of the undertaking, generating income of around R$ 2 million, in terms of wages and federal, state and municipal taxes.
Fibria’s CEO, Carlos Aguiar, emphasized that the Helvécia Seedling Production Unit marks the company’s resumption of investment in new projects and confirms the strategic importance of the south of Bahia to the company’s business. He also called attention to the distinctive environmental sustainability aspects of the project, which will have a system for harvesting rainwater for irrigation, the reutilization of effluent and the utilization of solar energy, among other features.
The Helvécia nursery will serve, as a priority, the company’s demand for the renewal of plantations located in the state of Bahia, where Fibria has a total area of 173,000 hectares, distributed amongst the municipalities of Alcobaça, Caravelas, Ibirapuã, Mucuri, Nova Viçosa, Prado, Teixeira de Freitas and Vereda.
