Business Conduct

Marcelo Martins
Cargill CEO

Our combined experience in innovation and risk management was key to successfully facing the uncertainties of the international financial crisis and recording the good results published in this Annual Report. We were able to make all the investments we had anticipated and most of our business in Brazil achieved or surpassed its goals. Furthermore, we closed the year with 6,000 employees, demonstrating our conviction that each one of their talents is a key factor in the company’s good performance, and we are not about to relinquish that. This attitude is also evidenced by the company being listed, for the ninth consecutive year, in the 150 Best Companies to Work For in Brazil ranking, by Você S.A. and Exame magazines. We want people to be proud of being part of Cargill just as we are proud to maintain a team of qualified professionals committed to our goal of being the partner of choice for stakeholders by the year 2015.

We closed the year with a net income of R$ 15.8 billion. Which is almost equivalent to the previous year. Our exports reached R$ 11.6 billion, 2% higher than the previous period.

These resources enabled us to open our sixth soybean processing unit, an investment of R$ 210 million in Primavera do Leste (state of Mato Grosso), which went into operation with state-of-the-art technology and consideration for the environment. They also made it possible to expand our corn processing plant in Uberlândia (state of Minas Gerais), with investment of R$ 112 million, set to begin operation in 2010. Another highlight was winning the bid for the grain terminal at the port of Santos (state of São Paulo), the Guarujá Terminal, a strategic point for our business, in partnership with Louis Dreyfus. We won the bid comfortably on offering R$ 228 million - an amount we expect to recover over the 50 years of concession. We are also doubling sugarcane crushing capacity at the Cevasa plant, which is due to begin sugar production. We decided to sell Seara, allowing us to focus our actions even more on the Business Units already in operation. In the area of food, we expanded the variety of salad dressings and production lines to be more competitive in the Northeast and Central-West regions under the brand name Liza. At the Porto Ferreira (state of São Paulo) unit we invested in a line for the exclusive manufacturing of white chocolate and compound, thus expanding our portfolio.

Our goal of continuous growth is accompanied by the belief that we must follow the correct criteria to achieve this. That is why we make our Corporate Responsibility Commitments public and official, including aspects related to the conduct of business, humane workplace practices, environmental standards and community involvement. An initiative that reflects these commitments was the establishment of a Sustainability Committee that brings together people from different areas of the company – together they started the debate on how the concept of sustainable development is already a permanent presence in our operations and ways to consolidate and instill it even further.

We continue to develop and launch products that reduce environmental impact and add health benefits to consumers. We introduced Ingeo™ to Brazil a plastic produced from vegetable raw material that degrades within five months when industrially composted, and also expanded production of Eritritol Zerose, a natural sweetener with a flavor similar to that of sugar and practically zero calories, launched in 2008.

Our two major social initiatives, the Fura-Bolo and the “de grão em grão” (Grain-by-Grain) Programs, completed ten and five years, respectively, and during this period more than 46,000 elementary school students from 135 public schools from 13 Brazilian cities were benefited. We also established a partnership with independent US government agency USAID to conduct a basic sanitation project in Porto Velho (state of Roraima) in 2010. The volunteer program is in place at our São Paulo headquarters where to date it has attracted 60 employees to join the hundreds who were already helping in their communities.

Our community responsibility also includes adopting environmentally friendly measures. One of the highlights is the expansion of our capacity to generate energy produced from biomass, economizing on exhaustible natural resources and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Projects such as this are being developed in the units of Uberlândia, Primavera do Leste, and Cevasa and as a result, our energy matrix is 62% powered by renewable sources.

Considering all these achievements in a scenario of uncertainty such as 2009, we look forward to the coming period with optimism. In terms of business, the Brazilian market is becoming increasingly stronger and more solid as business activities around the world tend to recover and this factor will continue to sustain demand for our products. With good performance and with the help of our partners and employees, we can continue to exceed expectations.