Estratégias para o aprimoramento competitivo de minifábricas processadoras de castanha de caju: um estudo de caso

Abstract

The mini-factories processing cashew nuts constitute na excellent alternative for generating employment and incomes, trough the aggregation of value to the cashew nuts produced by rural producers. Scholars of the them have steted 150 mini-factories have been implanted in the Northeast of Brazil, with installed capacity for 24.000 tons of cashew nuts, able to beget 3.000 direct jobs. Although those mini-factories represent an important technological advance in cashew business in the Brazilian Northeast, it is estimated that only 50% of the mini-factories are operating. Researchers from EMBRAPA – Tropical Agroindustry ans also undertakers envolved in the mini-factory business supose that the investaments have stuck mostly due to these two factors: first one is the deficiency in planning and managing the permanent and circulation investment; in second comes the disarticulation of the links in the cashew nuts productive chain. Befor this context, the presenting writing focused the identification of strategies able to increase competitivity of mini-factories and row material providers, besides a better planning and management of their invesdtment. For the accomplishment of this study, two corporations were selected as indicated by researchers of the Technological Business Área of EMBRAPA – Tropical Agroindustry. Both corporations are nowadays used as demonstrative of the cashew nuts making-up alternative system, named mini-factory. Two ways of articulation between the mini-factories producing cashew nuts and their row material suppliers can be detached, one of them traditional and the other one innovating. The difference is settled by prices and time practiced in the purchase. In the innovating modality, the mini-factories purchase cashew nuts on time and by a distinguished, price, which is market-price plus 20%, só that payment takes place after the trading of the nuts. In the traditional modality, the market-price is paid on demand. One of the mini-factories watched by this study adopts the innovating form of articulation and it also works differenrly from the traditional way by making use of terminal worlmanship in most stages of the productive process. By hiring terminal workmanship, it induces the participation of fixed cost at the prime cost to become rather low, making feasible its operation 6 months a year, which corresponds to the cashew nut harvest. Such strategies make possible for the mini-factory to considerally reduces its investment on stockpile. In the mini-factory traditionally articulated with the suppliers and that does not use terminal workmanship in the productive process, the participation of fixed cost at the prime cost is pretty expressive. This prime cost structure makes impracticable its operation exclusively during the harvest. Therefore, its working along the mid-harvest demands a great volume of stockpile. Based o the calculation of the return over the investment of both mini-factories, the study concludes that the most profitable modality is the innovating one, articulated with the row material providers. With regard to the planning and management of the permanent and circulating investment, even considering the analised mini-factories as succeeded enterprises, they have obtained significant gains of profitabilitu by following a new dimension for their permanent investments in machinery and equipments. In front of the result, the betterments in the process of articulation between mini-factories and cashew nit providers, associated to a better planning and managemenet of the investments, can be pointed as items of extreme important to the improvement of competitivity of the mini-factories processing cashew nuts in the Northeast of Brazil.