Photo: Disclosure COEX Carajás
COEX Carajás (Cooperative of Extractivists from the Carajás Flona), accelerated in 2020, concluded this year the payment of the installments of the funding raised and now leaves the portfolio of AMAZ impact accelerator. Around R$ 400 thousand were invested in the cooperative by AMAZ and other financiers.
The cooperative works with the extraction and commercialization of the jaborandi leaf, from which medicines for glaucoma and cancer are produced, and also with seeds of species used for reforestation, extracted from the Carajás National Forest (Flona de Carajás).
Of the entire acceleration and financing process, the first of its kind in which the cooperative participated, Ana Paula Nascimento, president of COEX, highlights negotiation power as the main legacy:
“We have better negotiating power. We used this resource and the investments we made to tell companies that we deserve more. The investments we made in the structure of the cooperative, in logistics, to offer a product with quality, more valued and at a better price, contributed a lot to improve negotiations with buyers. The last two years have been the best in jaborandi trading since the beginning of our cooperative. It made a lot of difference.”
The funding resource helped with the purchase of a pickup truck to transport Flona de Carajás products to the storage shed, renovation of the shed and purchase of its own headquarters in the center of the city where it is located, Parauapebas, in Pará.
Other points raised by Ana that are worth mentioning are the training of cooperative members, the purchase of GPS equipment to ensure traceability and the conditions for mapping the matrices by purchasing companies, a collection of books on Brazilian trees to facilitate the identification of species in the collection of seeds and dissemination of the work of the cooperative by AMAZ itself.
“The cooperative's ability to participate in this type of acceleration process also came from the AMAZ Call, our first. And our organizational capacity has improved a lot. We managed to maintain ourselves during the covid-19 pandemic, with a lot of adaptation and guaranteeing the income of the cooperative members.”
During this time, the cooperative not only remained active, but also expanded the sale of seeds, making deliveries in cities in Pará and in other states such as São Paulo, Tocantins and the Federal District.
“The success of COEX proves the potential of cooperatives as impact businesses in the Amazon. The development of the cooperative in the time that we were able to support it was exponential, and it taught us a lot while we tested an investment instrument, which was the loan. We wish COEX success in its next steps, that it continues to grow a lot as a business and can expand its operations beyond the Carajás Flona”, says Mariano Cenamo, CEO of AMAZ and new business director of Idesam.
Add a Comment