Brazil’s Cáceres Export Zone Seeks Investors After 30-Year Wait

FTZ News: The administrator of the Cáceres export processing zone in Mato Grosso state says Brazil’s tax reform could make the site more attractive to manufacturers once state tax incentives end. For now, one company operates there, just over a year after the zone opened.

The zone covers 247 hectares and has 341 industrial lots across five modules. Mato Grosso invested 51.3 million reais in the facility, which opened on Oct. 24, 2025, after more than three decades of delay.

The only occupant is Teak Resources Company. According to the administrator, the firm exports furniture and decking made in Cáceres to European countries.

Francis Maris Cruz, president of the zone’s administrator and a former mayor of Cáceres, spoke with the local news site RDNews at a seminar on Oct. 14. He expects demand to grow next year. “We believe that when the tax reform rules start to apply, many businesspeople will come looking for us,” he said.

Maris said companies inside the zone will keep relief on inputs and machinery used for export production. Firms outside the zone will still pay import duty and a maritime freight surcharge on capital goods, he said, a point that matters for plants that depend on advanced equipment.

Fabio Pucci Martins, executive secretary of the national council for export processing zones, said at the same seminar that the reform keeps the zones’ special regime and its favorable tax treatment. The only change, he said, is an adjustment to the new dual value-added tax. The federal CBS replaces PIS and Cofins, and the state-municipal IBS replaces ICMS and ISS. Zone exemptions do not cover the municipal services tax today, so the IBS will be covered automatically, Pucci said.

Maris said advanced talks are under way with companies in soy processing, spinning and weaving, ornamental stone, meatpacking and data centers. He did not name any company that has signed or is close to signing. The priority, he said, is plants that process local raw materials and add value to them.

He also pointed to the site’s location near the Paraguay River and the Bolivian border, and to a route through Rio Branco in Acre that leads to the Chancay port in Peru.

Infrastructure remains a constraint. A perimeter avenue to keep heavy trucks out of residential neighborhoods is planned for next year. The state infrastructure secretariat is reviewing the proposal, which is waiting for a tender. Maris also named a water-line extension and stronger power supply as priorities for meatpacking and data center projects.

Brazil has created 13 export processing zones, and four are in operation, including Cáceres. The report did not include job projections for the zone.

The tax reform is being implemented gradually. Whether the zone draws the plants its administrators expect will depend in part on whether infrastructure work keeps pace with the tax changes./.