We are close to the ethanol floor, says Raízen CEO

The CEO of Raízen, Ricardo Mussa, said, this Thursday (6), in an interview with CNN that Brazil is approaching the floor of the average price of ethanol, without major drops until the end of the year.

“Ethanol follows the gasoline trend very much. And gasoline depends a lot on the international market, how is the price of gasoline outside Brazil. What we saw was a strong reduction in the price of gasoline abroad, following the drop in oil, and ethanol followed. We are currently in the middle of the harvest, where there is more product availability, so the trend is still a small drop”, says Mussa.

“So I think we’ve come very close to the ethanol floor, we shouldn’t see big drops at the pump from here until the end of the year”, he continues.

According to a survey by the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), compiled by AE-Taxas, released on October 4, average prices of hydrous ethanol fell in 21 states and in the Federal District (DF), they rose in three states. (PR, GO and ES) and remained stable in one state (Roraima) until October 1st.

There was no survey in Amapá. At the stations surveyed by the ANP across the country, the average price of ethanol dropped 1.75% in the week compared to the previous week, from R$3,430 to R$3,370 per liter.

Changing habits in the pandemic

Mussa explains that during the Covid-19 pandemic, there were changes in consumer habits, such as the high demand for digital payment methods.

“The adoption of consuming by digital payments was huge to have less contact. So that was an acceleration of the digitization process. The applications, we use Shell Box to make payments, for example, grew a lot at that moment”, he explains.

Another point mentioned was the importance given to environmental and health issues. “So we saw, in our case, as a major ethanol producer and fuel distributor, the demand for our product, not only in Brazil, but outside Brazil, has increased a lot. People started to give more importance. These climate change issues have become more visible to consumers.”