Marel is pleased to announce it will open a new Progress Point demonstration and training center in Brazil in 2021, just five minutes from the Viracopos International Airport.
Update 4/2021: The relocation is on track to take place 7 June 2021
The new facility in Flex Viracopos near the Campinas city center is designed to house around 130 employees and accommodate 200 guests. Marel’s Brazil office, currently located in nearby Piracicaba, will move to the new building in Campinas. More than 80 of Marel’s Brazilian employees work from the office in Piracicaba, which has been home to the company in Brazil since 2002.
We’re in the fortunate position of needing more room to grow. We’re expanding our operations in Latin America, and we’re excited to be opening the company’s first Progress Point demo center in the southern hemisphere.
Clausius Nobrega
Regional Director in Latin America Marel
Marel works in partnership with its customers to transform the way food is processed. Its vision is of a world where quality food is produced sustainably and affordably.
Guided by this vision, Marel’s strategic objective is to be a full-line provider to poultry, meat and fish processors in all the relevant geographical areas of these industries. Its full-line approach includes standalone equipment, individual systems and full production lines, all controlled and integrated with our overarching Innova software.
Marel demo centers around the world support this work, providing an ideal space for collaboration and innovation. The company already has demo centers in Copenhagen, Denmark; Boxmeer, the Netherlands; and Kansas and Des Moines, North America. These four centers have also become crucial to the company’s sales and service activities.
By opening a demo center in Latin America, Marel will strengthen its ability to support the region’s protein processing industries with advanced, automated systems and solutions for every step of the production process.
Marel demonstration facilities are designed to imitate food processing environments in order to give both customers and Marel employees hands-on experience of the machinery and software during training, private demonstrations, showhows and other events.
In the current climate of travel restrictions and social distancing, factory visits and trade shows have become a rarity, and Marel’s demo center facilities have become even more vital for equipment demonstrations and training in a controlled factory environment. Our demo centers make it possible for us to offer extended reality (XR) demonstrations, combining live, online and virtual presentations of our products.
Around the world, Marel helps poultry, meat and fish processors gain a competitive edge and make the most of cutting-edge technology such as digitalization, automation and robotics. The opening of a Progress Point demo center in Latin America will be a major milestone for Marel, and for the region’s food processing industry.
The growing digitalization of food processing and the related growth in Marel’s food processing software offering is also well served by the opening of a demo center in the region. Marel software workshops and events – both online and face-to-face – have become regular fixtures at its demo centers, and the company anticipates this trend will keep growing in coming years.
In addition to the advantages of opening the region’s first demo center, the new 4,000m² facility in Campinas will become home base for Marel’s staff in Brazil, and its location was chosen to improve the company’s connectivity for Latin American customers as well as global access.
Progress Point Latin America will combine a demonstration area with office space, meeting rooms and catering facilities.
“From a sales perspective, the new office location brings us closer to many of our customers,” Nobrega explains. “Our service technicians and training experts are also excited about how this will make us more accessible to food processors in the post-Covid era, opening new opportunities for future collaboration.”
In reaching the decision to move to Campinas, Marel considered a myriad of factors – from transport and facilities, to how the move would affect everything from its employees to its supply chain. Quality, flexibility and sustainability were key, and the company explored many options before deciding to sign a contract with Bresco in August 2020 to begin developing the new facilities in Campinas.
Marel needed more space to grow in order to pursue its mission to transform food processing, and when it comes to a facility like this one, location is one of the most important factors. The company needed more room, and the new space needed to be highly accessible and in line with the company’s strong focus on sustainability.
The Flex Viracopos location is not only ideal for its proximity to the existing Marel offices, to the city center and to an international airport (it’s actually within the Viracopos International Airport Area) but also because it sits within the Bresco Corporate Park – an area that promotes the balance of business and environmental needs with some impressive features.
The park boasts numerous charging stations for electric cars; maintains an expansive green area with walking trails and bike paths that extend into the business areas of the site; and is characterized by open planning, including public squares surrounded by trees.
When looking at the various options, the sustainable planning of Bresco Corporate Park was the icing on the cake. We’re very happy to have found a site that will cater for our needs, offer flexibility for future growth, and keep the planet happy as well.
Helena Bjarnadottir
Global Director of Events and Demo Centers Marel
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