SUGAR CANE INSIDER WORRIES ABOUT SKILLED LABOR BOTTLENECK IN BRAZIL

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Luis Montanini, editor of “ProCana”, a Brazilian site and newsletter aimed at cane growers and ethanol and sugar producers in Brazil, has put out the following alert in the newsletter's July 2006 edition. It deals with the lack of qualified industry workers, workers that an expansion of the Brazilian ethanol industry wil require.

I would also list inadequate infrastructure (roads, railways, port terminals, etc.), less-than-perfect governmental institutions, and sky-high capital costs as other significant obstacles to the development of an ethanol market capable of meeting a sizable portion of energy needs in the U.S., the E.U., and Asia. H.O.
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TO OUR READERS:

The sugar and ethanol business is going through a great phase, it is true. The entire productive chain is being directly or indirectly benefited. But we have to put out an important, timely alert, an alert that has to do with the increase in demand for high-level professionals and for skilled technicians, brought on by the expansion of the sector.

To the same extent that the sector grows, qualified professionals become harder to find. Brazil has very few specialized courses to develop technicians for the sugar and ethanol industry, especially for the industrial area. What generally happens is that technicians are formed inside their own units, in the “mentor-mentee” style, and so forth. But there is only a very small amount of knowledge can be transferred this way.

Finding alternatives is extremely urgent, and that can be done with companies creating intensive courses to develop technicians, perhaps with the massive training of people who operate in similar functions.

An illustrative example comes from Alcopar, in the Brazilian state of Parana, and its local association of sugar and ethanol producers. At Alcopar, director Adriano Dias has established an agreement with the Rural University of Rio de Janeiro: the university supplies the students and the sugar and ethanol companies offer field training to these dedicated resident engineers, in order to acquaint them with the industry and to teach them that the “field”, in practice, has quite another meaning.

The natural tendency of a project of this scope is for students to choose to work for the company that offered him or her the opportunity in the first place. That way, part of the problem is solved.

In short, the sector needs to start to prepare skilled people. It is not simply a matter of addressing turnover, but of creating countless other qualified laborers to fill the many new positions that will be created in the coming years.

The time to act is now. There are numerous young men and women eager to walk in through these doors of opportunity. And it is necessary to train them, fast – well before the next World Cup, in South Africa, which seems just around the corner.

Luis Montanini

Follow what's happening in the Brazilian ethanol market on Ethablog, the only blog in English dedicated to Brazilian ethanol.