Santa Maria

A Family Group That Grew in Four Directions

The Santa Maria Group is a family group with sixty-four years of existence, headquartered in Guarapuava, in the state of Paraná in southern Brazil. It is organized around four principal businesses. The first is paper: a paper factory producing white paper. The second is energy, where the group operates three hydroelectric plants. The third is reforestation, where forests are grown for timber production. The fourth is agribusiness, working mainly with the cultivation of grains such as corn and soy.

The four arms arrived at different points in the group's history, and each stands on its own commercially. What began as an industrial company now spans generation assets, plantations, and agriculture - a broad footprint for a family-owned business, and an unusually varied one to steer from the center.

Why Breadth Made the Group Hard to Manage
 

Diversity of this kind resists a single management model. Manufacturing discipline governs the paper plant, where output is measured in tonnes and machine time. Energy answers to a completely different form of market control, shaped by generation and trading rather than production runs. Forestry works to horizons measured in growing seasons and hectares. Agribusiness moves with the planting calendar.

None of those disciplines translates cleanly into another, and the group's technology had to accommodate all four without flattening what makes each one work. Tying those threads together was what sent Santa Maria to market: it needed one solution capable of serving every operation properly, not a patchwork that handled one area well and the rest approximately.
 

Choosing for the Future, Not Just the Present
 

Cebula, who brings around thirty years of experience in the field, treated the selection as a long-term commitment rather than a purchase. "Choosing an ERP partner is a very important and strategic decision," he says. "More than talking about the present and the past, you need to understand what you want for your company in the future."

That framing shaped the questions Santa Maria asked. Which vendors could carry every business at the same time? Whose roadmap anticipated growth and new technology over the years ahead? Cebula is emphatic that this calls for a frank conversation with partners, the kind that tests intent rather than features. IFS, already two decades into the relationship, could answer on both counts.
 

A Single System Behind Every Operation 

Today, the ERP functions as "the backbone of the company," serving all businesses transversally. Santa Maria draws on many modules, from manufacturing, through supply, finance, and tax, so the same system underpins a production line, a generation asset, a plantation, and a harvest.

Support arrives through both routes available in Brazil, with the group working directly with IFS and through partners. Cebula is candid that partnerships can always run into difficulties, and says accessibility is what settles them. "The main point is the openness that IFS provides here in the Brazilian market, where we can talk to everyone; in case of a problem, we can align and have the solution to these problems in a fast and agile way." Portosys works alongside IFS as a very important partner in daily operations, close at hand whenever something needs clarifying or fixing.

What Changed: One Picture Instead of Four

Ask Cebula what changed most, and the answer is not a process metric. It is perspective. "Today we can look at the corporation as a whole and can see the results of all these operations in an integrated way," he says. "Something we wouldn't have been able to do before."

He names that as the main advantage the group gained. Where performance once had to be assembled business by business, leadership can now weigh the paper plant, the hydroelectric assets, the forests, and the farmland against each other - and against the corporation they collectively make up.
 

Two Decades In, With the Cloud Still Ahead
 

The relationship has now run long enough that IFS predates parts of the group it serves. Energy is the clearest illustration: a pillar of the business today, added while the same technology partner was already in place. For Cebula, that history proves something specific - a partner able to absorb not only the present but the future as well.

The next chapter is already mapped. IFS Apps10 means the group is not yet drawing on everything the tool offers around artificial intelligence, and the planned move to IFS Cloud is what brings those capabilities within reach. It follows the same logic that guided the original decision, which is why Cebula's advice to others considering the choice is straightforward: "You can trust IFS, which is a very important partner for the growth of your company."