News
Start of pulp mill installation brings movement to the region - 06.09.03
<Since the official announcement of the decision to build the Veracel pulp mill, made officially on May 8 in Brasilia, there has been plenty of activity on the part of people involved with the project. A total of 252 places were made available in a Pulp Technician Course the company will run, for which nearly 7,300 persons have applied. And, on Saturday, May 24, the earth moving work got under way at the future pulp mill site.
A total of 7,297 candidates — the majority women — applied for the Pulp Technician course designed to train the manpower needed by the future mill. The deadline for the applications, which closed May 26, had been opened to the residents of the nine municipalities within the company’s area of influence in the extreme south of the state of Bahia. Taught in partnership with SENAI and SETRAS, the classroom work will last for one year and will be followed by a three-month training period. During this period, the selected students will receive scholarships.
In descending order, the applications totaled 3,477 from Eunápolis, 1,570 from Porto Seguro, 632 from Itabela, 387 from Belmonte, 316 from Guaratinga, 310 from Itapebi, 298 from Santa Cruz Cabrália, 290 from Itagimirim and 17 from Canavieiras. In the majority of these municipalities, the presence of women dominated the applications, with a minimum requirement of a high school education. Of the candidates, 4,114 were women and 3,183 were men. The selection examinations contained tests in Portuguese, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and were held June 1 in a number of schools in Eunápolis and Porto Seguro.
Earth moving and construction permit
On May 22, the mayors of the municipalities of Belmonte, Eunápolis and Santa Cruz Cabrália signed a commitment authorizing the beginning of work in the region in order to avoid any construction delays. On May 24, at approximately 9:30 a.m., Agnaldo Arcanjo de Souza, 49, married and with three children, fired up his bulldozer and literally opened a path for the construction of the mill. With him, dozens of other workers began to clear the land where the US$ 950 million Veracruz pulp mill will be erected, the largest private project scheduled for Brazil over the next few years.
The earth moving phase of the project is being conducted on a 1.4 million square meter plot of land, and involves 1.1 million cubic meters of cuts 450,000 cubic meters of landfill, 470,000 square meters of the planting of grass on hillsides and 400 cubic meters of concrete rainwater drainage galleries.