Interview with Daniel Brum, Regional Sales Manager for Latin America: Liebherr customer services footprint in the region
Daniel, could you please introduce yourself.
I am an Electrical Engineer with a M.Sc. in Telecommunications and an MBA in Business Management. Since 2000, I devoted my career to the aviation industry, starting in the technical support area of a major air framer, then migrating to account management and sales. In 2016, I joined Liebherr-Aerospace Customer Services as Regional Sales Manager for Latin America. I am based at the Liebherr-Aerospace liaison office in São José dos Campos (Brazil), the area known as the biggest aerospace cluster in the country. In transversal coordination with other Liebherr-Aerospace entities in the Americas and in Europe, my mission is to pursuit long-term growth of Liebherr-Aerospace’s aftermarket business in Latin America, while assuring our customers’ upmost satisfaction with Liebherr products and services.
Could you please tell us a bit about aviation in Brazil?
Brazil is among the largest economies in the world and the largest in Latin America, where it is also the largest and most populous nation. While Latin America operates about 11 % of the active global aircraft fleet, Brazil is responsible for 32 % of that share. In a country with more than 210 million inhabitants, air transportation is not in everyone’s life yet, but it is getting there! Latin America’s passenger traffic has grown 2.7 times between 2002 and 2019 and the aeronautical community consensus is that it will double again within the next 20 years. In Chile it is expected to even almost triple! Hence, a substantial number of new aircraft – both passenger and cargo - will join the market.
The market is definitely there and Liebherr is too, with our upmost willingness to grow our presence in the region: since 2005, we run a production plant in Guaratinguetá, near São Paulo, called Liebherr-Aerospace Brasil. More than 300 colleagues produce there machined sub-assemblies that are used to feed our OEM production plants in Europe. From there our components are delivered to aircraft manufacturers around the world.
How does Liebherr-Aerospace ensure proximity to its customers in Latin America?
It is embedded in our core values to be trustworthy partner and to build long-term relationships with our customers. We entertain a 30+ year’s relationship with Embraer. Liebherr products are installed on almost every aircraft program the Brazilian air framer has produced. Since 20+ years, we maintain a fully established liaison office on the premises of Embraer in São José dos Campos and our team provides local support for engineering, certification and production. Via our facility Liebherr-Aerospace in Saline, Michigan (USA), a customer service station that supports the Americas, Brazilian airlines have access to Liebherr customer services, such as spare parts, repairs, overhauls and technical support.
Our commitment to our customers in the region was recently very much appreciated and identified especially during these very challenging times. We received higher performance grades on air framer’s customer satisfaction surveys and were very grateful and honored to be officially recognized by the Latin American & Caribbean Air Transport Association (ALTA) as one of the “Top 10 Suppliers” in 2021.
Within the past 6 years, I witnessed many successes shared with our customers in the region, while also closely working with them to overcome the difficulties at hand. Our customers have experienced Liebherr-Aerospace’s strive for excellence in quality, innovation, reliability and customer support. Our goal remains unchanged: We stay close to our customers and continue to work on reliable and trustful long-term partnerships.
