Miller Magazine Issue: 124 April 2020

74 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM MILLER / APRIL 2020 continue to provide the necessary support to our customers. We see opportunities in all countries. Obviously, each one with its social, political and financial particularities. After all, the world needs food, and storage facilities are a key part of the food production chain. You export your products to many countries. It needs a solid supply chain. How do you manage this? We have a robust supply chain structure, carefully managed by our team, in accordance with the quality standards of our brand. Our robustness, capacity and engineering qualificati- on allows us to count on the best suppliers in the market. The purchased materials are monitored by our team that cons- tantly guide our purchasing decisions according to quality and performance criteria. You opened a technological center in 2012. It shows your passion for innovation. What can you say about the inno- vations and solutions that you have brought to the grain storage industry? Innovation is one of our priorities. Our brand is recognized as a vanguard in innovation Latin America post-crop market. Recent- ly we launched our digital platform, called sync. Sync is the first platform in Brazil prepared for connecting all post-harvest equ- ipment by an IoT platform. For us, sync is a great evolution to farmers and companies that are in the grain processing business. What can you say about the trends in grain storage? As all markets, I believe that the main trend to grain storage is the data monitoring and automation process growth. I have no doubt that the equipment technology will be following this trend, reducing costs, increasing productivity, improving the operations and ensuring grain quality. You will celebrate the 100th anniversary in 2025. It is a great milestone for a company. Looking to the future, what do you believe the challenges and opportunities are for the company? Can you tell us about your plans and expectations for years to come? Based on the food demand world increase, we believe in the agribusiness market growth around the world, and we are certain that storage is a strategic business to ensure sustai- nable growth of the agribusiness supply chain. Currently, the world changes very fast, and to be up to these changes, innovation has been one of our priorities, following global trends which position Kepler Weber as a reference on technology in our field. Brazil has managed to become a top 3 exporter of major food and industrial commodities (soybeans, corn) but it has logistics and infrastructure challenges. How Kepler can help to overcome these challenges? Kepler has an important role in this issue, as the largest com- pany in Brazil in the segment of solutions in the grain storage and dry-bulk cargo handling operations in port terminals and transshipments hubs. We have capacity and strength to sup- port the market growth, but it also depends on economic and political factors, as long-term investment public programs to grain storage structures, greater confidence for the private sector to invest in the country and mindset changes of the grain producer to prioritize investments in grain storage. In Brazil, only 16% of storage capacity is located on farms, whi- le in the USA for example, this number is 56%. We believe that there is already a movement and awareness for this to change, but it is necessary to speed up the process with clea- rer policies and more robust and sustainable plans.