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The British Council Alumni community has organized on 27 September, the lecture “Entrepreneurship and Innovation with Brazilian DNAs”, by Fernando Reinach, Executive Director of Votorantim Novos Negócios and founder and coordinator of the Brazilian Genoma Project.
Fernando Reinach spoke about his professional pathway, and how his success as an academic researcher lead him to assume the executive chair of Votorantin Novos Negócios and also of two companies: Canavialis (works with genetic treatment of sugar cane) and Allelyx (produces genetically modified sugar cane).
Reinach explained his role as the executive director of the company, clarifying the companies’ two main focuses, the one of diversification, which searches for new opportunities for strategic businesses, and the one of risk capital, centered in high technology investments.
About the investments, or venture capital, in the area of biotechnology in Brazil, Reinach asserts that its major problem is the culture grounded in the universities, which leads researches to believe that it is too complicate to raise funds to finance the development of their findings. Reinach himself has worked in demystifying this idea with lectures for academics, and visits to universities where he raises the issue. According to him, universities fail in not showing ways in which the researcher can profit from the results of good research.
In developed countries, with a more traditional culture of investments in biotech, the investors are the ones who search for scientists and fight for the good researches. This would be the ideal situation for Brazil too.
Reinach says that the approval of any new technology represents risks, though. A good example of this is the aircraft industry and the aircraft release for retail that happens after a number of test hours, 100 per say, agreed upon by the regulatory agency. However, there are problems that can come up only after these 100 hours, and other problems that can come up even after 1000 hours. This reasoning, according to Reinach, brings the possible danger of “killing” the release of new technologies.
This same situation occurred when electricity was first used in large scale, once we also lived under constant fear of having victims caused by the use of this new technology, from this moment on present in each and every street in the cities.
According to him, the great difficulty faced by CTNBio (Brazilian Regulatory Agency) concerns the definition around the amount of tests considered reasonable before turning legal the use of a new technology.
About the production of Ethanol as an alternative fuel for the generation of energy Reinach states that the Tropics have an intrinsic advantage when compared to the sub-tropical climates, which allows Brazil to be a Biomassa productor by excellence. “We’re leaders in this new technology. We have developed it and this is the best place in the world to produce Ethanol. We must not risk this momentum as so many others that have passed by. It will be something very hard to write in our own History.”
The Brazilian alcohol, according to Reinach, is extremely competitive once it is cheaper than gasoline and it is in the beginning of its technological cycle, whereas petroleum is more and more expensive and hard to be found. Following the fall of its price, sugar will become less important and alcohol, in the future, shall conquer new international contracts in the long run. Nowadays, alcohol represents only 1% of the enormous international market of liquid fuels.
Reinach comments on the Brazilian law that allows all kinds of experiments with transgenic plants, as long as the plants’ roots don’t enter Brazilian soil because this would require a special authorization. These obstacles, according to him, can block the development of new technologies and may cause Brazil to sell its technologies for competitor countries that allow such experiments, which would be an “incredible stupidity”. Reinach also highlights that some transgenic products are already massively used (insulin, vaccines, the enzyme that process cheese, Papayas and others), but the industry hides such facts, afraid of negative public opinion.
Finally, Reinach affirms that, contrary to what one may believe, “the ethical matters have a great influence on the economic development of a country”.
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