G.E. in Brazil

International General Electric Co. is planning to pour some $10 million into new Brazilian electrical manufacturing plants. But I.G.E.'s president, able, 64-year-old Clark Haynes Minor, who knows the world as well as many a U.S. businessman knows his own country, claims that the new plants will expand, not retard, I.G.E.'s flow of exports from the U.S. to Brazil.

First step in the Brazilian expansion program is a $1,000,000 addition to the, electric-light-bulb plant at Rio de Janeiro. Erected in 1920, the Rio plant is large and modern, employs 2,000 people, has many Brazilians in key positions. Native engineers have been brought to the U.S., sent to college, and given post-graduate work in G.E. plants. Under these trained technicians, bulb sales at Rio are expected to jump from $15 to $40 million annually when the new building is completed this year.

Also to be set up at Rio is a fully equipped laboratory. Aided by the flood of technical research from the world-famed G.E. laboratory at Schenectady, Rio engineers will devote their main study to the possibilities of using more Brazilian raw materials in the manufacture of electrical equipment.

But the real expansion will be in Sao Paulo, which Minor describes as the fastest-growing industrial area in the world. Here I.G.E. has bought a 35-acre tract, has put Brazilian architects to work designing the first factory building unit. It is to be 500 ft. long, will cost some $2,000,000, and will be completed in 1944. In it I.G.E. will make electric motors and assemble apparatus shipped from the U.S.

As Brazil grows industrially, so will the Sao Paulo plant. The outlook: a $10 million investment, 20,000 employes within the next ten years.

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