History of the Coimex Group
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The Coimex Group's investments are focused port and distribution logistics, foreign trade, energy sector, financial services, road operations and real estates management - with the closest focus being on foreign trade and logistics, capitalizing on the long and extremely wide-ranging expertise of the group's companies in these two areas.

These opportunities - accompanying Brazil's economic and social development over these 56 years of its history - have been taken with a strategically-chosen focus on speed of action, competence and the capacity to innovate, backed by the credibility that comes from the stability of a powerful and long-standing business institution. These are the factors that have kept the Coimex companies in the leading positions in their markets, while continuing to pursue growth through addition of value, innovation and creativity.

In 1949, starting as an individual coffee broker working alone, Otacílio José Coser was able to use the opportunities created by growing Brazilian coffee production - the chance to win a significant position in the world consumer market - together with the strategic location and port infrastructure of Brazil's Espírito Santo State, to found the group's first company, a coffee trader and exporter, in Vitória, the state's capital city.

The structure that had been organized to trade coffee attracted other commodities, and - ahead of its time in terms of Brazil's opening of its market - led Coimex to expand into import expertise and services. When Brazil opened its foreign trade widely at the beginning of the 1990s, the Coimex companies were more prepared for growth in specialized logistics, rapidly adding new expertise and investments in import services, and creating companies handling all the stages of negotiation and distribution of products for both the Brazilian and external markets.

In line with the demands shown by the market, the Coimex group has transformed each moment of the growth of the economy into an opportunity. When highway privatizations began, the group invested in highway concessions in Espírito Santo. When the group saw that oil would become important for Espírito Santo, it invested in the building and operation, in the state, of Brazil's first port designed exclusively for the oil industry. In another courageous and innovative move, in 1998, the Group created Empresa Brasileira de Terminais Portuários (EMBRAPORT) to build and operate Brazil's biggest-ever multi-use private-sector port terminal. When electricity shortages emerged as a major factor in the economy in 2001, the group joined with other partners to build Companhia Energética de Petrolina (CEP), at Petrolina in the state of Pernambuco in Brazil's Northeast - its first position in electricity.

The Group continues its quest for excellence, success and innovation with the same vision, perspicacity and competence with which it began more than 56 years ago. Its success continues to reflect the contracting and maintaining of talents with capacity for innovation, executive action and solid administration. Every day new markets and investments are studied and put into action, continuing the organization's solid growth and significant presence among Brazil's major business groups.