South Korea’s Hyundai Corporation is focusing on purchasing farmland in Brazil, according to a Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo on May 9. The newspaper reported that Hyundai, in an effort to purchase farmland, had meetings with officials of the state government and it has plans to cultivate soybeans in the farmland and export to South Korea.
The officials from Hyundai, visited the state of Piaui in northeastern Brazil last week, will visit the states of Maranhao, Tocantins and Bay in June for meetings with the state officials. The state of Piaui is known to have approximately eight million hectares of arable land.
Hyundai, despite its intention to purchase 10,000 hectares of arable land, could not make concrete progress on the negotiation, according to Folha de Sao Paulo.
A source from Hyundai said a project in Brazil the company plans to promote is similar to that in Russia, and added that the only difference is that in Brazil, it plans to cultivate soybeans with a yearly production of 50,000 tons. The source also mentioned that this will amount to 4% of annual soybean imports in South Korea.
[Jin Choi / edited by Soyoung Chung]
