En Englais: Cooper opens sales office in Brazil

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. has established a sales office in São Paulo to support local distributors and dealers and help further the company's Latin America expansion.

 The office, Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. Brasil Fabricacao, Importacao e Distribuicao de Pneus Ltda., will operate under the leadership of Durval Amaral, general manager, a former Goodyear executive who joined Cooper last year after working for the past couple of years as an industry consultant and university professor.

 Commenting on the development, Luis Ceneviz, managing director of Cooper's Latin America Tire Operations, noted Cooper has “put in place an outstanding core leadership team with decades of industry experience and knowledge specific to Latin America.”

Mr. Amaral worked for Goodyear for 28 years in various executive capacities — in Brazil, Venezuela and the U.S., according to his LinkedIn page. He left Goodyear in late 2012.

Cooper hired Mr. Ceneviz — formerly an executive with Apollo Tyres Ltd. and Goodyear — in February 2015 to oversee its Latin America Tire Operations, which covers Mexico, Central and South America.

Cooper is targeting Latin/South America for exponential growth as part of its global growth strategy, according to statements the company made in 2014. At that time it said it anticipated selling 4 million to 5 million units throughout Latin America by 2020.

This is Cooper's first sales office in Latin America, but the company sales agents in more than 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations.

More recently, Cooper disclosed last November a partnership with Argentina's Fate S.a.i.c., which calls for Fate to distribute Cooper-branded consumer tires in Argentina and for the companies to investigate ways to work together, including tire production, offtake arrangements and possible cooperation on research and development activities.