The Heineken brewery announced this Wednesday (27) an investment of R$ 1.8 billion in the construction of a factory in the city of Passos, in the southern region of Minas Gerais. The plant was originally to be built in Pedro Leopoldo, in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, but the brewery withdrew from the project after criticism that it would jeopardize an archaeological site in the region.
The construction of the unit had been approved by state and municipal environmental authorities, but was blocked by ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation), a federal government agency.
The factory would be built in a region close to the archaeological site where Luzia’s skull, the oldest human fossil in the Americas, was found — a site under environmental protection.
In addition to the announcement of the new factory, Heineken also signed a TAC (Conduct Adjustment Agreement) with the MPMG (Public Ministry of Minas Gerais) and the MPF (Federal Public Ministry) on the company’s operations in Pedro Leopoldo.
The TAC foresees an investment of R$ 150 thousand by Heineken in projects that will be defined by the Public Prosecutor’s Office with the command of the environmental protection area in which Luzia’s remains were located. With this, the investigation will be closed.
According to promoter Carlos Eduardo Ferreira Pinto, responsible for the Environment area at MPMG, the TAC also includes points that oblige Heineken, in the project planned for Passos, to use only renewable energy for production.
“With this, the unit in the municipality will be a world reference in sustainability”, said the promoter. According to Pinto, the investigations in Pedro Leopoldo will be closed with the signature of the TAC.
The MP’s representative also said that the investigations did not find that the initial works by Heineken in Pedro Leopoldo had affected the archaeological site of Luzia. The closing of the agreement was not imposed as a condition for the plant to be installed in another city.
According to the CEO of Heineken in Brazil, MaurÃcio Giamellaro, the decision to change the location of the plant was “courageous”.
“We had a lot of support in the city of Pedro Leopoldo, and we have, in our values, a value that is called courage and the other, which is respect. And we understood that at that moment we needed to respect the decisions of all people , and together with the government of Minas we took the courageous decision to relocate our brewery”, he said during the announcement of the new plant.
The company claims that the choice of municipality was influenced by factors such as proximity to the markets of Belo Horizonte, the capital of São Paulo and the interior of São Paulo, and the availability of water in the region — Passos is in the Rio Grande basin.
The expectation is that the new plant will generate 350 direct jobs in the municipality. The inauguration is scheduled for 2025. The governor of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema (Novo), also participated in the announcement.
The factory will produce two labels: Heineken and Amstel, both pure malt. The factory is the first in Minas Gerais and will have a capacity of 5 million hectoliters per year, with the possibility of expansion, according to the brewery.
The report contacted ICMBio, but did not receive a response until the text was published.
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