It is a great honor for DB to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our presence in Argentina. Indeed, it is a major step for our Group to have achieved this milestone. 50 years of continuous presence in Argentina is has been a real challenge, as we all know. We have to praise our past owners – Mr De Smet and Mr Gille to have decided to venture far away from our frontiers to address the nascent agro industry here in Argentina followed the following year in Brazil. It already showed the commitment of our stakeholders to deliver our technology and to provide our solutions next to our clients on the most competitive terms. Some will remember that we used to have high customs duties for importation of equipment which made capital expenditure prohibitive for those investing in the oilseeds industry. So instead of exporting the equipment as was commonly done at that time, we decided to export the know how to enable a competitive pricing with a local support to meet Argentinian requirements. It was an audacious move as because executing a project far from your home base is not without risk and we had to address local issues such as high inflation and political uncertainly.
Although we came to Argentina to serve the crushing industry, we rapidly expanded into oils and fats y processing with our technology portfolio of refining, fat modification, oleo chemicals, detergent and soap.
Looking back, one must admit that our performance has reflected the country’s development: a real roller-coaster. For sure, we have demonstrated resilience and a deep commitment to serve the industry with some of the nicest and recent achievements in the oilseeds market such as building the biggest ever crushing plant in the world. It has been a trade mark of DB to always rise to the next challenge of the industry by looking each time at bigger and better performing plants
This journey was possible thanks to the people who have driven the venture since 1969 representing high DB values : Entrepreneurship, solution and client driven creativity and gaining the respect of the stakeholders of our industry and delivering reliable solutions over the years. Their dedication has been the corner stone of our success in shaping the market. Although it has been a team performance, I wish to take the opportunity to pay tribute to some of our colleagues as Andre Staelmans who came from Belgium 50 years ago to open the branch, Mario Rataus who consolidated this presence, Fernando Markous and Mauro Scardigno who leads our team
The support given by our subcontractors and suppliers to deliver and execute our projects were equally important and are part of our success here.
It goes with out saying that the most important part is you – you the investors relying on our people to deliver your plants to meet your objectives. We shall never say enough how we praise your confidence to support our activity in Argentina which is a leader in the global soybean business.
We can only express and hope that Argentina will continue and keep reinforcing it’s leadership in this industry and you can rely on your DB partner to provide the technology that you aim for.
If the past, we were convinced by market growth, we keep faith that we still have a bright future with an industry moving potentially moving to a new paradigm: HUGE plants with very low operating costs and to contribute with our long experience of 70 years to meet your current and future challenges of safety, efficiency, and sustainability to minimize the impact on the environment ….and as to prove our commitment, we have reinforced our structure with Maxime de Ville who is our newly appointed regional manager.
Olivier Hanne,
Global Sales Director