Ricardo Parada Pimenta
Ricardo has started his professional career as a resident civil engineer in Brazil, having worked for Imobiliária Trabulsi in the construction of several apartment buildings in Santos region.
He then worked as operations trader of the Alcohol and Chemicals Division at Cotia Trading, being responsible for all operational steps of the alcohol (ethanol) exports, including but not limited to transportation, storage, supervision and insurance of the product from the mills till ship's tanks at loading port. He then became the manager of the alcohol department, being responsible for origination from Brazil and sales of industrial and fuel ethanol to Far East, Europe and U.S.. Cotia has become the largest ethanol exporter from Brazil during this period.
Ricardo was then recruited by SAB Trading, to develop and handle an alcohol business plan, bringing SAB to the 3rd position in the ranking of world ethanol trade. He was one of the pioneer in helping SAB to promote imports of synthetic ethanol from Russia and wine ethanol from the EEC to Brazil, which led to an annual average volume of 200.000 m3 between imports of crude fuel grades and exports of industrial grades worldwide. He also pioneered some operations of drawbacks and swaps of sugar for ethanol.
He then moved to Coimex Group as the manager of the sugar and alcohol department in São Paulo, working on all sugar origination from Brazil, and developing alcohol origination and sales in the world market, leading the company to extend business to SE Asia, India, Pakistan, CBI, Latin America and East Europe.
From São Paulo, Ricardo moved to Geneva, as a commercial director, administrator and member of the board of Coimex Trading (Suisse) S.A. with the mission of seeking presence on destination sugar markets and also to increase the company's participation in the ethanol world market. During his stay in Geneva, Coimex has traded annual volumes in excess of 500.000 m3, generating net operational profits in the order of U$ 5 million and has identified opportunities for ethanol dehydration in the CBI, and screen wash formulations.
Ricardo then joined Bauche Energy, to occupy the position of commercial director and member of the board, as a minority shareholder. His activity at Bauche Energy marked and consolidated the company's presence in the world ethanol market. (Annual volumes were in the range of 300.000 to 500.000 m3). His achievements included the ethanol dehydration operations in the CBI, sales of fuel Brazilian ethanol to UK and U.S., sales of industrial ethanol to India and ethanol origination from Pakistan, identification and establishment of contacts with the Philipines fuel ethanol market.
Ricardo and his team, were then recruited by North Sea Group in Zug, to become the CEO of North Sea Global Ethanol (a company created to expand the ethanol and biofuels business of the Group). He managed the North Sea Group teams in Brazil and Switzerland and focused on origination from Brazil, Pakistan, USA and spot + long term sale's contracts to Switzerland, UK and France.
In the past few years, he concentrated on advising several Ethanol companies, including but not limited to Lukoil Panamericas LLC, Glencore Ltd (where he developed an ethanol game plan to be implemented in 5 years), Alcosuisse, Jürgen Schmidt Chemievertretung GmbH, Sepco, Hill Dickinson and some other companies involved with the production of 2nd (2G) generation biofuels. His role on the 2G advisory services, is to provide off take for their future production and also to seek potential investors for those projects.
In summary, 30 years of worldwide experience and expertise in the sectors of ethanol, biofuels, sugar, and now in 2G too.
Ricardo holds a Security engineer degree from Santa Cecília University, in Santos, Brazil and a Civil engineerd degree from Presbiterian Mackenzie University, in São Paulo, Brazil. He speaks english, portuguese, spanish, italian.
Collector of miniatures (ships, planes, military, trains, vehicles) Classic and easy listening music Cinema Sports (Formula 1, DTM, tennis, football and rugby) Nature Animals (cats and dogs).