Brazil’s Lula reunites with meat billionaire Batista brothers as China trade ties bloom

The billionaire Batista brothers’ stunning comeback is thrusting them into Brazil’s highest circles of power less than three weeks after their appointment to the board of JBS SA.

Wesley and Joesley Batista – who grew their family butcher shop into the world’s largest meat producer with crucial help from Brazil’s development bank during President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s past administrations, then became involved in a massive corruption scandal that brought down thousands of politicians including Lula – are now hosting the leftist leader in one of their plants that will start exporting to China.

Friday’s encounter in Campo Grande, a centre-west capital in Brazil’s agricultural heartland, is part of Lula’s bet that increasing agricultural exports to the world’s second-largest economy can help reproduce the commodities-fuelled good times he oversaw in the beginning of the century.

They met at a JBS factory that is set to make the first shipment of meat to China as part of new export agreement reached in the wake of Lula’s trip to the country last year. A total of 38 Brazilian plants recently received authorisation to send products to the Asian nation.

“This family is predestined for success,” Lula said during the event. “Joesley and Wesley are responsible for this company becoming the largest animal protein company in the world. This is a source of pride for me. If we want, we can do anything we dream.”

JBS plans to invest roughly 150 million reais (US$29 million) to double daily production capacity at the Campo Grande facility to 4,400 cattle heads, Chief Executive Officer Gilberto Tomazoni said during Friday’s ceremony.