The company’s new plant will allow the company to produce sweet bakery categories, such as cakes and panettone, until then, made by other companies
The company Wickbold, known by the namesake brand and Seven Boys, acquired in 2015, intends to increasingly position itself as a food company, and not just a bakery. It is in this context that at the end of the year it acquired a factory in Guarapuava, in Paraná, which was named Basteck, in homage to one of the matriarchs of the family.
The operation, announced this Thursday (28), has investments of R$ 80 million, accounting for the amounts disbursed in the purchase and the resources that will be applied for the next three years. The plant will allow the company to produce sweet bakery categories, such as family cake, single-portion cake and its own line of Panettone, previously made by partners.
With the acquisition, we started to manufacture in-house, always with our differentiation in quality, says Pedro Wickbold, general director since 2020 and representative of the company’s fourth family generation. Another novelty is the launch of honey bread and brownies on the market, which enter the 84-year-old company’s portfolio for the first time.
According to data presented by the executive, the unit allows the production of 50 tons of food per day. In the case of panettone, a category in which the company will have 12 items between the two brands, the volume is 14 million units per year. These are releases that take us to another level in the food industry, says Wickbold.
In the first half, the plant was responsible for 5.3% of net revenue, a percentage that Wickbold expects to increase over time, based on new purchasing processes, greater negotiating power and penetration into new categories.
It should also help the company deliver projected revenues for 2022 of R$ 1.6 billion, a 20% growth compared to the previous year, even in the face of an adverse scenario, with high inflation and wheat prices impacted by the war in Ukraine. .
According to Wickbold, the result is the result of a sum of factors, such as the residual increase in consumption of industrialized breads in the pandemic, transfers of part of the high price to consumers and also gains in efficiency in production and operation.
Margins have flattened out, but we’re doing reasonably well this year. We’ve made an important productivity move, so we’ve never been able to pass on everything, he explained.
In addition to the purchase of the Guarapava unit, the executive made it clear that the company intends to make new moves and that it is looking at other segments within the food industry that present synergy. As a message, we are looking at the market with appetite, he said.