Edson Mororó Moura and Conceição Viana Moura

In the Beginning, an Idea

It could have happened in New York, Malaysia, Moscow, London or anywhere else on the planet. But this story actually started in the backyard of a house in a city called Belo Jardim, located in the Brazilian State of Pernambuco (185 km or 115 miles from Recife). It was a small city, one that did not even have a public water network. And it was right there, smack in the middle of the Pernambuco countryside, in a region suffering the lack of incentives, and where, ironically, only one car existed, that Moura Batteries was born. The year was 1957.

The beginning was more or less like this: As soon as he graduated at the Federal University of Pernambuco, industrial chemist Edson Mororó Moura, together with his wife Maria da Conceição Viana Moura, went to work at the Mariola candy factory where his father was a partner. The factory was located in Belo Jardim, the city where he was born and raised. After some time, Moura realized that this factory would not provide him with sufficient income in the future. It was then that a mechanic who worked with his father came to him with an idea. Agripino Farias had a book that explained roughly how to make a battery plate. And then came the question: Why don’t we make batteries?

The idea was welcome. However, Moura soon found out that he had much more studying to do and that the business was not as straightforward as it appeared. He knew that he really needed to learn a lot more about the subject. He requested the help of an old professor who was the director of the Chemistry School where he had studied, and this professor found him a job at a leading company in São Paulo. Without money, but hungry for knowledge, this young Pernambuco resident took a truck ride to the Southwest with two recommendation letters in his hand.

Once at the factory and being interviewed by technical director, he realized that he could be regarded as a kind of spy, and therefore, not be very welcome. So he decided to write a letter to the company thanking it for the opportunity, but explaining that he did not plan to stay. Moura still had another recommendation letter, which he took to the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) of São Paulo. There, he met a professor who introduced him to a man who had already worked at a battery plan for 10 years. This man took him on a visit to a factory that had gone bankrupt, and there Moura could hire a worker and buy a few pieces of used equipment that could be used to manufacture other pieces of equipment to produce a battery, although quite rugged.

After that, he returned to Belo Jardim and started his own business. In the beginning, the batteries came out too weak, and the sales were restricted to the countryside of the states of Pernambuco, Paraíba and Alagoas. The plant produced an average of 50 batteries per month. Furthermore, the cost of manufacturing the batteries was extremely high and the resulting quality was poor. There was a high return rate. Therefore, Moura decided to submit a financing project to Banco do Nordeste and Sudene designed to improve the factory.

The Search for Technology – After almost 10 years of existence, Banco do Nordeste and Sudene finally granted the company a loan, which it used to build a more modern industrial plant with state-of-the-art equipment for producing high quality batteries. But this was not enough. Technology was badly needed. Moura earned a USAID scholarship and traveled to the USA, where he visited some plants and acquired a notion of the technological improvements available at that time. He learned a great deal. Around the year 1968, he left the United States for England. There, he learned about one of the largest battery producers at the time, Chloride, which owned one of the most advanced technologies in the world. It was with Chloride that Moura was able to sign an agreement to receive the technology, which turned out to be quite significant for the development of his plant.

Growth and Distribution – Based on this technological improvement, Moura started to build high-quality batteries, expanding his sales to other regions of Brazil. Because Chloride had agreements with some other auto assemblers, the Moura batteries became the original part for these companies in Brazil. From there on out, the company to operate throughout the entire Brazilian territory. This was when the distribution units were created. Initially called warehouses, they were managed directly by the company. Later, under a new management, these units developed into a network and achieved a certain degree of independence. The dealers responsible for the units became partners and began to share the legal and fiscal responsibility with Moura.

Management through Total Quality – Moura had the technology and distribution, but something else was missing. When his sons and son-in-law (Sergio, Edson, Pedro Ivo and Paulo Salles, respectively) started working at the company, they noticed that Moura lacked strong business administration compatible with the production capacity and dimension that Moura had achieved in Brazil. So they started a business mission to Japan, which during the 1980’s, was considered the fastest growing country in terms of industrial management. There, they learned new company administration and management techniques and brought all this knowledge back to Brazil. They tried to apply what they had learned there, but everything was too Eastern in practice. They needed a Brazilian touch. That was when Moura decided to become a member of the Cristiano Otoni Foundation of Belo Horizonte, were he achieved excellent results.

Expansion – After that, Moura always sought to improve the company’s operation and the quality of its products by buying new technologies, promoting partnerships and expanding the distribution network throughout Brazil and also to other countries like England, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile. This is how that modest automotive battery plant – founded in 1957 in the backyard of a house in Belo Jardim – developed into one of the large Brazilian economic and industrial groups. Moura currently owns five plants (four in Belo Jardim, Pernambuco and one in Itapetininga, São Paulo), one central office located in Jaboatão dos Guararapes, Pernambuco, an OEM unit designed to provide assistance to the plants in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais and another 62 distribution units.