Rio Grande do Sul
We have left Santa Catarina and are now in Rio Grande do Sul. It is the most southern state in Brazil. It borders with Argentina in the West and Uruguay in the South. Rio Grande de Sul is famous for its’ endless sandy beaches that are only broken by the estuary of two huge lakes.
At one of these lakes lies the capital city of the state and home to 1,5 million people, Porto Alegre.
Regarding to a comparative study of the United Nations, is Porto Alegre, the city with the highest living standard in whole Latin America. This also reflects the well functioning public transportation system. For instance, there are exclusive bus lanes in the median of main streets. They ensure that buses arrive on time despite facing heavy traffic in rush hours. One manufacturer that is supplying cities with urban but also regional buses, is the Brazilian company MarcoPolo.
MarcoPolo focuses on bus bodies. They produce more than half of the bodies made in Brazil and export their products to more than sixty countries. They have been associated with igus® for about 1 and a half years and are making use of iglidur® bearings in their door system.
The bearings have been working to such a high standard that the leading engineer has plans to equip other parts with iglidur® bearings too. He appreciates the high quality and long life of igus® products stressing in-particular the self-lubrication of iglidur® bearings and their advantage over conventional bearings.
iglidur® within door hinges is a very common application. iglidur® bearings are not only maintenance-free, yet additionally have a high compressive strength, are dirt resistant and very cheap.
Part of our tour in Brazil includes visiting specific universities. Here, students have the opportunity to get to know our products and receive support if they already make use of them.
igus® offers a young engineering support (Y.E.S).. Y.E.S. provides help and comprehensive packages for those who would like to research, create and develop (Get to know more on http://www.igus..co.uk/YES).
Porto Alegre was a host city for the World Cup. On the way to our customers, we passed the stadium which can hold about 51000 people.
Here, five World cup matches took place (For instance: France vs. Honduras or Germany vs. Algeria).
The stadium is located next to the lake. The lake bank offers space where people can relax and escape from the stressful city life.
Porto Alegre is more or less the most southern point of our tour. We will only have a short stopover in Argentina and then head towards the stunning Foz do Iguacu waterfalls.
As this is being written, we are in Bento Goncalves. The town Bento Goncalves is the centre for Italian immigration. This goes hand in hand with the fact that it became famous as the wine capital. Most Italian immigrants dedicated themselves to the grape and wine production.
We leave the city to take our last big journey.
I will keep you up to date,
yours Sascha
