Daniel K. Ludwig and the Jari Project

Daniel K. Ludwig was the very model of a self-made man.

He left school after the eighth grade and worked in shipping-related jobs before striking out on his own to ship molasses around the Great Lakes. He was then nineteen.

Before he was done (he died in 1992 at the age of 95) he was the sole owner of National Bulk Carriers, one of the largest shipping companies in the United States.

He pioneered the construction of supertankers. He expanded into banking, cattle ranching, real estate, mining and insurance. He founded a chain of luxury hotels in Mexico, Bermuda and the Bahamas, had operations in the Americas, Africa, Australia and the Middle East and was, at one point, the richest man in America, #1 on the Forbes 400 list when it was first published in 1982. 

He was a philanthropist, too, who donated more than one billion dollars of his fortune researching cures for cancer.

But he maintained a low profile, stopped talking to the press in the 1950’s and few Americans ever heard of him.

Not so in Brazil. Here Ludwig is famous, his name inextricably linked to one of the most ambitious industrial projects ever undertaken in the history of man. And even more remarkable for where it was undertaken: in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest.

The Jari Project began in 1967, when Ludwig made the biggest land purchase ever registered to a private individual. It was  larger than the American State of Connecticut, and spread out, about equally, on either side of the Jari River, the stream that separates the current-day States of Pará and Amapá.

Back then, though, it was all federal land – and it was from the Brazilian Federal Government that Ludwig bought it.

Initially, Ludwig’s plan was to exploit his new acquisition by ranching and farming, but he soon expanded it to include mining and the manufacture of cellulose, for which he intended to plant fast-growing trees, pulping and processing them right there in situ.

For that he had to construct two factories, one for manufacturing the product and one to generate electricity.

And he had to undertake a vast project to develop the infrastructure.

The factories were built in Japan, and they were designed to float, so they could be towed, by sea and river, to their final destinations – a distance of over twenty five thousand kilometers.

The infrastructure included a railroad, a port, more than nine thousand kilometers of roads, and a town (Monte Dourado on the map above). The latter occupied an area of sixteen square kilometers and included housing, schools, clubs, shops, a police station, a hospital and an airport.

It took more than a decade to do it all. In the process, Ludwig’s town grew to more than thirty-thousand people.

But then the authorities in Brasilia began to fear, as they put it, loss of sovereignty.

The truth of the matter was that Ludwig, a foreigner, had simply become too powerful for the politicians to stomach.

So they played the nationalist card. (The title, above, which appeared on the cover of a magazine of the time, reads, The American Invasion.)

Ludwig, frustrated and annoyed, abandoned the project in 1982. He estimated that he’d sunk, in the dollars of those days, almost one point two billion into it.

He got some back, but only a small part. After all, who could afford to buy it?

Finally, in 2000, the factories were bought by the Orsa Group ( http://www.grupoorsa.com.br/en/ ) a company dedicated to sustainable development. And now, Ludwig’s factory is profitably producing vast quantities of cellulose – and doing it in a way that enabled them, in 2004, to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. 

( http://www.fsc.org/ ).

A happy end to a somewhat unhappy story - and all thanks to the vision of an American entrepreneur.
   

Leighton - Monday