Reconvert, innovate, have a long-term view, anticipate crises or overcome them and invest. The list that must be fulfilled by a company in Argentina to be sustainable over time is long and demanding.
It is not easy to survive in an ever-changing economy, in which the commercial and tax rules of the game can suddenly be modified, and in which the dollar never ceases to be news.
This is how, in the corporate sector, the law of the strongest is no longer imposed, but rather that of the most flexible to adapt to these changes and the new times.
In Argentina, there is a company that can be a worthy case of international academic study: Newsan, whose founder, Rubén Cherñajovsky, managed to overcome the shocks typical of the market and could turn each challenge into a business opportunity. Moreover, it even came out stronger.
The level of diversification currently exhibited by the company, which is about to complete three decades of experience in the domestic market, is really impressive.
The name of the company is mainly associated with the production of electronic goods and household appliances, having started its operations in 1991 in Tierra del Fuego, where it currently has six industrial plants.
However, in recent years, Newsan has ventured into multiple branches of activity: in addition to manufacturing cell phones, televisions and air conditioning equipment in Tierra del Fuego, it also produces white goods (such as refrigerators). In addition, it is an important distributor of LED lamps for public use and even has a line of deco and bazaar, under the Atma Home brand.
If a milestone marked this company is to have created the Newsan Food unit, which in just a few years became the largest fish exporter in Argentina. Under this same unit, they also send products such as peanuts, fruits, honey and olive oil to more than 70 markets.
But they were not satisfied. Newsan also ventured into mining, becoming one of the main shareholders of the Don Nicolás gold mine, located in Santa Cruz.
And, in line with the current trend, it has partnered with Vestas, the world's leading wind turbine manufacturer, to produce state-of-the-art equipment at its Campana plant.
The beggining
How did Newsan set foot on the island? Cherñajovsky, at a very young age, proved to have an entrepreneur's soul. At the end of the 1970s he was at the head of a company that began to venture into the importation of consumer electronics. At that time, they managed the Sansei brand and, according to recalls, they were leaders in the commercialization of high fidelity audio equipment in Argentina.
During the presidence of Raul Alfonsin, the businessman suffered a setback when imports were limited. However, a few years after that cimbronazo, the first great opportunity arose: with the merger of the Japanese Sanyo, in 1991 they settled in Tierra del Fuego, which began to encourage the establishment in the island through tariff advantages to produce locally .
From there, and until the year 2000, several milestones are linked, such as the start of the production of air conditioning and microwave equipment and the incorporation of brands to the portfolio such as Samsung, Sony and Aiwa, as well as the purchase of Noblex and Atma.
However, not everything was easy: with the crisis of 2001 and the asymmetric pesification faced a great storm.
"All accounts receivable came to be worth in pesos and I was financed in dollars, in the international market, we had just acquired Noblex, what happened, I lost all the assets of the company in one day," recalls Cherñajovsky, in dialogue with iProUP.
"My Japanese partners had loaned me US $ 30 million to buy Noblex, I did not sign the contract and I tried to manage the liabilities with financial instruments, we had the factory closed, it was not easy at all, I had to start almost from scratch, but we managed recover it ", explains this entrepreneur, who says admire visionaries such as Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, and Elon Musk, creator of Tesla.
With the arrival of the new millennium, Newsan added the licenses of other companies, such as LG and Pioneer. And then, in addition to becoming strong in the production of the first LED TVs in the country, it was also a pioneer in the business of cell phones with touchscreen technology, long before it was a massive technology.
Today, the company is a leader in the production of LED screens and air conditioning equipment. And Cherñajovsky, 27 years after its creation, strongly defends the Fueguian pole: "People have no idea what electronic plants are, we do not stick stamps, as some say, only in robotics we made an investment close to US $. 100 million, there is a lot of technical capacity, to the point that they are more advanced than many companies in Asia ".
From cell phones to fishing
Of course, on the road the entrepreneur came across a lot of obstacles that he had to overcome.
As of 2011, as the lack of dollars was exacerbated during the government of Cristina Kirchner, there would be a controversial demand: the so-called "1 to 1", a mechanism implemented by the then Secretary Guillermo Moreno that obliged companies to have Compensate each imported dollar with one of export.
Many firms then launched to look for "quotas". That is, to register under their name and CUIT the sales to the world that other companies actually made.
That's how, for example, some automakers went to search from wallpaper makers to wineries to have dollars in favor and get merchandise from abroad.
But Newsan, on the other hand, was one of the few who managed to make this restriction an opportunity.
"It was unnatural for a company to go from one item to another, but it seemed worse to have to offset my imports with exports from another and pay a differential, almost all of them did, but I never considered it," he says.
"I took that as an opportunity: I partnered with someone who had a small fishing trade and we built Newsan Food, the number one company in the country in the export fishing sector," he stresses.
According to the latest records, it markets to other countries almost 60,000 tons of food per year, for a value exceeding US $ 230 million. For this, it has a fleet of six of its own boats (only three of them demanded an investment of US $ 20 million), to which another 32 that operate for the company add up. In addition, it has 12 processing plants and six cold chambers.
And he did not stop there: "Now we are moving forward in negotiations to acquire a very large fishing company," Cherñajovsky anticipates.
The relationship of this entrepreneur with the food industry, by the way, was not new: his father and grandfather had dedicated themselves to that same business.
In fact, his first big venture was to become a direct importer of Chilean almonds. At what age? "I was 22 or 23. I was too young, I was leading the project and I was a partner, a friend and I loved him as a father," he reflects.
"He trusted me so much that he even sold his apartment to put all the money in my company," he recalls.
The refounding of a mythical national brand
The year 2014 marked another milestone for Newsan: in April of that year, Cherñajovsky inaugurated in Avellaneda a plant with which it relaunched one of the iconic brands of the national industry: Siam.
The project demanded a strong investment and created 200 jobs. There they began to make refrigerators, to which later they added freezers, dishwashers and small appliances.
Cherñajovsky speaks passionately about Siam, a brand that was born in 1911 and that back in 1933 began to make history with the production of the first national ice cream makers.
"When we arrived, the factory was very down, but there was an illusion, what we did in that plant was incredible, it was not putting two pesos: we made a huge investment, because I was convinced to position a brand created by Di again. Tella, someone who dreamed of a big national industry, "he says.
New bet: renewable energies
Newsan continued to make strong inroads into the domestic production of household appliances. In fact, it came to add another plant of last generation, this time in Campana.
However, the fall in consumption and the greater import opening with which the macrismo advanced prompted this entrepreneur to continue to innovate and mark -as he defines- "another milestone in the history of our company", as was the reconversion of said plant -in less than a year-, to start producing wind turbines.
"Instead of selling it or transforming it into a logistics warehouse, we decided to continue investing and betting on renewable energy, which is a strategic area for us," he says.
That is how they sealed an alliance with Vestas, world leader in the production of these equipment. The implementation of this project was completed in 2018 and generated 200 new direct jobs and another 500 indirectly.
By the way, the environmental issue is a decisive aspect: "A few years ago, I was touring a plant in the south with one of my sons, who opened my eyes to sustainability".
"After a series of talks we had, put together a recycling company to which we send all the plastics, which means that today we do not send almost anything as waste, and all the packaging that protects the electronic items we sell is made with cardboard. I took my hat off for what he did, "he enthuses.
What's next: regional expansion
After investments of more than US $ 300 million in the last seven years, Newsan has recorded annual sales of more than US $ 1.7 billion and has more than 6,100 employees.
But history is still being rewritten: the company's big bet now is international expansion.
"We are taking the first steps in a plan oriented to the appliance market that would cover from Mexico down, covering the region," he anticipates.
Looking back, but also looking at the future projects, Cherñajovsky reflects: "The construction of an organization like this takes a lot of time but, above all, a lot of energy, and you have to have capacity and a lot of luck" .
"Is energy the decisive component?", iProUP asks. Faced with this, he replies: "In reality it is a conjunction of things, but it is true that if you want to be a businessman you have to always want something more ... After all, in short, there is the desire. strong, it's not possible. "
And, being someone who could think about retiring and enjoying everything he knew how to build, why does he decide to move on? Why take more risks? Faced with this, Cherñajovsky offers a clear answer: "Because I am a dissatisfied being, that is the engine, for me, there is always more, and that comes from dissatisfaction, it is what feeds me".