Not exactly Pine Barren related. However I was surprised to learn that pig iron still has a use and the article mentions charcoal. Also I thought that if this was ford it would be in the prime time news.
Toyota Trading Company Buys Materials Made by Brazilian Slaves
By Michael Smith and David Voreacos
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp.'s trading company buys pig iron, a key steelmaking ingredient, from a firm that used charcoal made by Brazilian slaves, according to government reports.
Toyota Tsusho Corp.'s U.S. unit bought at least seven shipments of pig iron from Usina Siderurgica de Maraba SA, or Usimar, in 2006, U.S. Customs records show. Usimar purchased charcoal from a camp where Brazilian inspectors in May found 22 people, including three children, who weren't being paid for their work. They were living in squalid shacks without electricity and plumbing, and drinking unsanitary water, government inspectors have reported.
Toyota Tsusho, part of the Toyota Motor Group, is a publicly traded company whose largest shareholder is Toyota Motor. Toyota Tsusho sells steel to Toyota Motor, says Toyota Tsusho spokesman Morimasa Konishi.
Toyota Motor spokesman Dan Sieger says Toyota doesn't buy pig iron or steel from its trading company, even though Toyota Tsusho's spokesman says his firm and its subsidiaries process steel in three U.S. locations and sell it to Toyota.
``It's very clear that Toyota is in denial,'' says Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, the U.S. arm of the world's oldest human rights group. ``They're being disingenuous. That just doesn't wash.''
Car Companies Join
Toyota Motor, the world's second largest carmaker, based in Toyota City, Japan, didn't join Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG, General Motors Corp. and Honda Motor Co. on Dec. 4 when those other companies announced plans to work together to train suppliers to avoid buying materials made by slaves.
Sieger, based in Erlanger, Kentucky, said Dec. 21 that Toyota changed its decision and joined the anti-slavery effort.
The automakers took the joint step after Bloomberg News reported Nov. 2 that car companies in the U.S. use pig iron produced with charcoal made by slaves in Brazil. Pig iron is an ingredient in the steel that's used in nearly all cars made in the U.S.
In Brazil, pig iron is made with iron ore and charcoal, which serves as both a fuel and a source of carbon for the metal.
Ford, based in Dearborn, Michigan, stopped buying slave- tainted pig iron when asked about Bloomberg's findings in October.
Toyota Tsusho America Inc., known as TAI, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho, imported at least two pig iron shipments from Maraba, Brazil-based Usimar after the Nov. 2 Bloomberg News article. The Bloomberg News story reported in May that the Brazilian government had raided a camp that supplies Usimar.
Written Assurances
U.S. Customs' records show Toyota Tsusho America in New York was named as the importer of 13,699 metric tons of pig iron from Usimar on Nov. 4 -- two days after the article was published. Toyota Tsusho America imported another shipment, of 11,831 tons of pig iron, from Usimar on Dec. 26, Customs' records show.
U.S. Customs records show that between March 29 and Dec. 26, Toyota Tsusho America received seven shipments totaling 80,378 tons of pig iron from Usimar. They were delivered to ports in Charleston, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge and Gramercy, Louisiana, the documents show.
Toyota Tsusho America Senior Vice President Mike Lavender, based in Georgetown, Kentucky, says his company has written assurances from its Brazilian pig iron suppliers, including Usimar, that they don't buy charcoal from slave camps. He didn't respond to e-mails for comment on his customers who buy pig iron.
``To the best of TAI's knowledge, all Brazilian pig iron producers that TAI purchases from are honoring and acting in accordance with the written assurances they have provided,'' Lavender says.
Could Harm Reputation
Toyota Motor owns 20 percent of Toyota Tsusho, which is based just outside Toyota City in Nagoya. Toyota Industries Corp., another member of the Toyota Motor Group, owns 10 percent of the trading company. Toyota Tsusho lists 268 more shareholders and banks that handle share trades, almost all of whom have stakes of less than 1 percent.
Joao Morais, director of Usimar's charcoal unit, says he can't comment until his boss returns from vacation on Jan. 21. He says all company executives are traveling, vacationing or unavailable for comment. Usimar executives didn't respond to repeated written and telephone requests for comment for the past three months.
Usimar, a privately held company, has dropped out of a Brazilian association of pig iron producers that's sponsoring programs to combat slavery in charcoal camps, says Marta de Lima Cavalcanti, a spokeswoman for the industry group.
`Switching Brands'
Steven Heim, social research director at Boston-based Boston Common Asset Management, which manages $700 million and holds 105,847 Toyota shares, says the carmaker is not acting responsibly regarding materials derived from slavery. He says Toyota could harm its reputation with consumers and investors.
``How much is your brand worth?'' Heim asks. ``You don't want to have people switching brands because they think you're not concerned enough about suppliers using slave labor.''
Toyota Motor said Dec. 22 that it expects demand for its fuel-efficient cars in the U.S., Asia and Europe to raise vehicle sales by 6 percent in 2007, which would mean Toyota would surpass Detroit-based General Motors as the world's largest carmaker.
Toyota Tsusho, which was founded in 1948, has exported Toyota parts and vehicles to 120 countries, according to its Web site.
It has branched out with 350 subsidiaries and affiliates that buy and sell commodities, textiles and foods, including frozen meat, seafood, nuts, coffee and grain. It also runs Toyota dealerships outside the U.S. and Europe, according to its Web site.
Fivefold Increase
Toyota Tsusho shares have risen more than fivefold in yen value in the past three years, outpacing the twofold gain by Toyota Motor in the same time. That's because the trading company sold more auto steel plate, machinery and vehicle parts as demand for Toyota cars and trucks increased, says Toyota Tsusho spokesman Konishi.
Toyota Tsusho had annual sales of 3.94 trillion yen ($32.54 billion) in the year ended March 31, 2006, up from 3.32 trillion yen in the period the year earlier. Toyota Tsusho shares traded at 3,160 yen ($26.07), up 70 yen, or 2.25 percent on Jan. 18.
Koji Endo, a senior auto analyst at Credit Suisse Group in Toyko, rates the company ``out perform.''
`One Big Village'
``Toyota Tsusho plays an important role within the Toyota Group and helps out Toyota's global expansion,'' Endo says. ``It would be difficult to find a similar group like the Toyota Group because Toyota Group is like one big village and companies help each other out within the village.''
Toyota Tsusho America has a plant in Georgetown, Kentucky -- TAI Georgetown Steel Center -- that processes steel plate for Toyota Motor, Toyota Tsusho spokesman Konishi said Jan. 17. Toyota Motor's largest car plant in the U.S. is in Georgetown.
Toyota Tsusho subsidiary Millennium Steel Service LLC processes steel in Princeton, Indiana, Konishi says. Subsidiary Millennium Steel of Texas LP processes steel in San Antonio, Texas, he says. Toyota has car plants in Princeton and San Antonio.
Toyota spokesman Sieger says the car company doesn't purchase steel from its affiliate. ``We don't buy steel from Toyota Tsusho,'' Sieger said on Jan. 17. ``We buy our steel from major steel suppliers in the country.''
Congressional Probe
In response to the Nov. 2 Bloomberg News story, the U.S. Congress began an investigation in December. U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the most senior Democratic member of the House Committee on Foreign Affair's Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, has called for hearings on imports of pig iron.
In the past decade, Brazilian labor inspectors and prosecutors have freed hundreds of slaves working in degrading or inhumane conditions and without pay in charcoal camps that supply pig iron plants, government records show. Inspectors have been finding slaves in the Amazon since at least 1993.
Brazilian law defines slavery as work in degrading or inhumane conditions. Inspectors write that they ``rescue'' workers when they determine they haven't been paid for their labor.
The Brazilian task force discovered the Carvoaria do Mineiro charcoal camp, near Vila Fortaleza in the Amazon, after a group of workers fled last May 16. The workers said they had been harassed and threatened by crew bosses, government inspectors wrote in 37-page report dated May 28. The inspectors found the camp supplied charcoal to Usimar.
The workers took refuge at the office of a Catholic Church human-rights group in Maraba, Brazil, where they were met by the task force, the report says.
`Permanently in Debt'
The task force of five Brazilian labor ministry inspectors, a labor prosecutor, and six armed police, moved into the camp in a jungle clearing in the Amazon state of Para on May 18.
They discovered the 22 workers making charcoal in igloo- shaped, brick and mud charcoal kilns. Many workers were barefoot or wearing nothing more than rubber sandals, shorts and tee- shirts. They were exposed to extreme heat, poisonous animals and injury from carrying large loads of wood to the kilns, the report says.
Men felled trees without proper training on how to use chainsaws, the report says.
The people weren't being paid for their work, the inspectors wrote. ``Workers endured terrible hygienic conditions, were housed in unhealthy shacks, worked without papers, and weren't being paid aside from small advances,'' the report says. ``Aside from that, the employees were permanently in debt because they were required to buy from their overseers.''
Three Children
The laborers worked in the heat and smoke without protective goggles, respirators or safety shoes, the inspectors found. The only sources of drinking water amid the kilns were dirty plastic soft-drink bottles shared by the laborers, the report says.
Workers lived and slept in two wooden shacks without drinking water, showers or protection from the elements. The only toilet, in one of the shacks, didn't work.
``At work, the workers relieved themselves in the jungle,'' according to the report, which includes 26 photographs of the camp.
Among the workers loading and unloading charcoal from the kilns in the jungle were three boys aged 12, 14 and 17.
The laborers had been recruited from Estreito, a town about 100 miles away, the report says. Labor brokers lured the men to the camp with as much as $470 in advances for food and transport that the charcoal camp boss held as a debt against the workers, explaining why they weren't paid, inspectors found.
Interviews with the camp's owner, Hildomar Jose Tavares, workers, and truck weight manifests showed the camp was supplying Usimar with charcoal, inspectors wrote.
Crude Stoves
In a May 19 meeting, the company agreed in principal to pay back wages, benefits and damages to workers, the report says. Four days later, Usimar agreed to specific terms, and the workers were paid $23,990 of back wages, benefits and damages, the report says.
The men in the camp had cooked their meals over crude stoves made from open barrels inside the shacks, inspectors found. One photograph shows a man leaning against a wall eating from a pail.
Another photo shows a young worker crouched next to an open pit filled with untreated murky water: the camp's only source of drinking water. The pit was open to dust and insects and filled with tadpoles, the report says.
After three days at Carvoaria do Mineiro, inspectors concluded the workers had to be rescued and paid. ``The conditions were degrading,'' chief inspector Virna Damasceno wrote.
To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Smith in Santiago mssmith@bloomberg.net ; David Voreacos at the U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey dvoreacos@bloomberg.net .
Toyota Trading Company Buys Materials Made by Brazilian Slaves
By Michael Smith and David Voreacos
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp.'s trading company buys pig iron, a key steelmaking ingredient, from a firm that used charcoal made by Brazilian slaves, according to government reports.
Toyota Tsusho Corp.'s U.S. unit bought at least seven shipments of pig iron from Usina Siderurgica de Maraba SA, or Usimar, in 2006, U.S. Customs records show. Usimar purchased charcoal from a camp where Brazilian inspectors in May found 22 people, including three children, who weren't being paid for their work. They were living in squalid shacks without electricity and plumbing, and drinking unsanitary water, government inspectors have reported.
Toyota Tsusho, part of the Toyota Motor Group, is a publicly traded company whose largest shareholder is Toyota Motor. Toyota Tsusho sells steel to Toyota Motor, says Toyota Tsusho spokesman Morimasa Konishi.
Toyota Motor spokesman Dan Sieger says Toyota doesn't buy pig iron or steel from its trading company, even though Toyota Tsusho's spokesman says his firm and its subsidiaries process steel in three U.S. locations and sell it to Toyota.
``It's very clear that Toyota is in denial,'' says Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, the U.S. arm of the world's oldest human rights group. ``They're being disingenuous. That just doesn't wash.''
Car Companies Join
Toyota Motor, the world's second largest carmaker, based in Toyota City, Japan, didn't join Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG, General Motors Corp. and Honda Motor Co. on Dec. 4 when those other companies announced plans to work together to train suppliers to avoid buying materials made by slaves.
Sieger, based in Erlanger, Kentucky, said Dec. 21 that Toyota changed its decision and joined the anti-slavery effort.
The automakers took the joint step after Bloomberg News reported Nov. 2 that car companies in the U.S. use pig iron produced with charcoal made by slaves in Brazil. Pig iron is an ingredient in the steel that's used in nearly all cars made in the U.S.
In Brazil, pig iron is made with iron ore and charcoal, which serves as both a fuel and a source of carbon for the metal.
Ford, based in Dearborn, Michigan, stopped buying slave- tainted pig iron when asked about Bloomberg's findings in October.
Toyota Tsusho America Inc., known as TAI, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho, imported at least two pig iron shipments from Maraba, Brazil-based Usimar after the Nov. 2 Bloomberg News article. The Bloomberg News story reported in May that the Brazilian government had raided a camp that supplies Usimar.
Written Assurances
U.S. Customs' records show Toyota Tsusho America in New York was named as the importer of 13,699 metric tons of pig iron from Usimar on Nov. 4 -- two days after the article was published. Toyota Tsusho America imported another shipment, of 11,831 tons of pig iron, from Usimar on Dec. 26, Customs' records show.
U.S. Customs records show that between March 29 and Dec. 26, Toyota Tsusho America received seven shipments totaling 80,378 tons of pig iron from Usimar. They were delivered to ports in Charleston, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge and Gramercy, Louisiana, the documents show.
Toyota Tsusho America Senior Vice President Mike Lavender, based in Georgetown, Kentucky, says his company has written assurances from its Brazilian pig iron suppliers, including Usimar, that they don't buy charcoal from slave camps. He didn't respond to e-mails for comment on his customers who buy pig iron.
``To the best of TAI's knowledge, all Brazilian pig iron producers that TAI purchases from are honoring and acting in accordance with the written assurances they have provided,'' Lavender says.
Could Harm Reputation
Toyota Motor owns 20 percent of Toyota Tsusho, which is based just outside Toyota City in Nagoya. Toyota Industries Corp., another member of the Toyota Motor Group, owns 10 percent of the trading company. Toyota Tsusho lists 268 more shareholders and banks that handle share trades, almost all of whom have stakes of less than 1 percent.
Joao Morais, director of Usimar's charcoal unit, says he can't comment until his boss returns from vacation on Jan. 21. He says all company executives are traveling, vacationing or unavailable for comment. Usimar executives didn't respond to repeated written and telephone requests for comment for the past three months.
Usimar, a privately held company, has dropped out of a Brazilian association of pig iron producers that's sponsoring programs to combat slavery in charcoal camps, says Marta de Lima Cavalcanti, a spokeswoman for the industry group.
`Switching Brands'
Steven Heim, social research director at Boston-based Boston Common Asset Management, which manages $700 million and holds 105,847 Toyota shares, says the carmaker is not acting responsibly regarding materials derived from slavery. He says Toyota could harm its reputation with consumers and investors.
``How much is your brand worth?'' Heim asks. ``You don't want to have people switching brands because they think you're not concerned enough about suppliers using slave labor.''
Toyota Motor said Dec. 22 that it expects demand for its fuel-efficient cars in the U.S., Asia and Europe to raise vehicle sales by 6 percent in 2007, which would mean Toyota would surpass Detroit-based General Motors as the world's largest carmaker.
Toyota Tsusho, which was founded in 1948, has exported Toyota parts and vehicles to 120 countries, according to its Web site.
It has branched out with 350 subsidiaries and affiliates that buy and sell commodities, textiles and foods, including frozen meat, seafood, nuts, coffee and grain. It also runs Toyota dealerships outside the U.S. and Europe, according to its Web site.
Fivefold Increase
Toyota Tsusho shares have risen more than fivefold in yen value in the past three years, outpacing the twofold gain by Toyota Motor in the same time. That's because the trading company sold more auto steel plate, machinery and vehicle parts as demand for Toyota cars and trucks increased, says Toyota Tsusho spokesman Konishi.
Toyota Tsusho had annual sales of 3.94 trillion yen ($32.54 billion) in the year ended March 31, 2006, up from 3.32 trillion yen in the period the year earlier. Toyota Tsusho shares traded at 3,160 yen ($26.07), up 70 yen, or 2.25 percent on Jan. 18.
Koji Endo, a senior auto analyst at Credit Suisse Group in Toyko, rates the company ``out perform.''
`One Big Village'
``Toyota Tsusho plays an important role within the Toyota Group and helps out Toyota's global expansion,'' Endo says. ``It would be difficult to find a similar group like the Toyota Group because Toyota Group is like one big village and companies help each other out within the village.''
Toyota Tsusho America has a plant in Georgetown, Kentucky -- TAI Georgetown Steel Center -- that processes steel plate for Toyota Motor, Toyota Tsusho spokesman Konishi said Jan. 17. Toyota Motor's largest car plant in the U.S. is in Georgetown.
Toyota Tsusho subsidiary Millennium Steel Service LLC processes steel in Princeton, Indiana, Konishi says. Subsidiary Millennium Steel of Texas LP processes steel in San Antonio, Texas, he says. Toyota has car plants in Princeton and San Antonio.
Toyota spokesman Sieger says the car company doesn't purchase steel from its affiliate. ``We don't buy steel from Toyota Tsusho,'' Sieger said on Jan. 17. ``We buy our steel from major steel suppliers in the country.''
Congressional Probe
In response to the Nov. 2 Bloomberg News story, the U.S. Congress began an investigation in December. U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the most senior Democratic member of the House Committee on Foreign Affair's Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, has called for hearings on imports of pig iron.
In the past decade, Brazilian labor inspectors and prosecutors have freed hundreds of slaves working in degrading or inhumane conditions and without pay in charcoal camps that supply pig iron plants, government records show. Inspectors have been finding slaves in the Amazon since at least 1993.
Brazilian law defines slavery as work in degrading or inhumane conditions. Inspectors write that they ``rescue'' workers when they determine they haven't been paid for their labor.
The Brazilian task force discovered the Carvoaria do Mineiro charcoal camp, near Vila Fortaleza in the Amazon, after a group of workers fled last May 16. The workers said they had been harassed and threatened by crew bosses, government inspectors wrote in 37-page report dated May 28. The inspectors found the camp supplied charcoal to Usimar.
The workers took refuge at the office of a Catholic Church human-rights group in Maraba, Brazil, where they were met by the task force, the report says.
`Permanently in Debt'
The task force of five Brazilian labor ministry inspectors, a labor prosecutor, and six armed police, moved into the camp in a jungle clearing in the Amazon state of Para on May 18.
They discovered the 22 workers making charcoal in igloo- shaped, brick and mud charcoal kilns. Many workers were barefoot or wearing nothing more than rubber sandals, shorts and tee- shirts. They were exposed to extreme heat, poisonous animals and injury from carrying large loads of wood to the kilns, the report says.
Men felled trees without proper training on how to use chainsaws, the report says.
The people weren't being paid for their work, the inspectors wrote. ``Workers endured terrible hygienic conditions, were housed in unhealthy shacks, worked without papers, and weren't being paid aside from small advances,'' the report says. ``Aside from that, the employees were permanently in debt because they were required to buy from their overseers.''
Three Children
The laborers worked in the heat and smoke without protective goggles, respirators or safety shoes, the inspectors found. The only sources of drinking water amid the kilns were dirty plastic soft-drink bottles shared by the laborers, the report says.
Workers lived and slept in two wooden shacks without drinking water, showers or protection from the elements. The only toilet, in one of the shacks, didn't work.
``At work, the workers relieved themselves in the jungle,'' according to the report, which includes 26 photographs of the camp.
Among the workers loading and unloading charcoal from the kilns in the jungle were three boys aged 12, 14 and 17.
The laborers had been recruited from Estreito, a town about 100 miles away, the report says. Labor brokers lured the men to the camp with as much as $470 in advances for food and transport that the charcoal camp boss held as a debt against the workers, explaining why they weren't paid, inspectors found.
Interviews with the camp's owner, Hildomar Jose Tavares, workers, and truck weight manifests showed the camp was supplying Usimar with charcoal, inspectors wrote.
Crude Stoves
In a May 19 meeting, the company agreed in principal to pay back wages, benefits and damages to workers, the report says. Four days later, Usimar agreed to specific terms, and the workers were paid $23,990 of back wages, benefits and damages, the report says.
The men in the camp had cooked their meals over crude stoves made from open barrels inside the shacks, inspectors found. One photograph shows a man leaning against a wall eating from a pail.
Another photo shows a young worker crouched next to an open pit filled with untreated murky water: the camp's only source of drinking water. The pit was open to dust and insects and filled with tadpoles, the report says.
After three days at Carvoaria do Mineiro, inspectors concluded the workers had to be rescued and paid. ``The conditions were degrading,'' chief inspector Virna Damasceno wrote.
To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Smith in Santiago mssmith@bloomberg.net ; David Voreacos at the U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey dvoreacos@bloomberg.net .