The factory woke up. What about everything around it?

How many Brazilian cities have a factory asleep, waiting for a second owner?

Camaçari had its own for almost five years. When Ford ended production in Brazil in January 2021, the complex stood with its gates locked, and thousands of families lost their paychecks overnight. Today marks exactly one year since BYD opened its operation at the same address, and the first-anniversary numbers are impressive: 100,000 vehicles assembled in the first nine months and 8,500 direct jobs, according to the company, with a target of 10,000 by December.

Comparing it to the previous owner calls for care. Ford was never just Ford. According to a survey published by Valor Econômico right after the closure, there were 18 supplier plants inside the complex and 12 more outside it. The carmaker employed about 5,000 people, and the suppliers another 7,000. For every job at Ford there was almost one and a half in the neighborhood. That ring of companies is what made Camaçari an industrial hub, and it disappeared along with the carmaker.

BYD works differently. The company makes in-house much of what other carmakers buy from third parties, and its executives talk about 17 industrial units producing the car’s components, from batteries to motors. If the December target is met, BYD alone will come close to the 12,000 jobs that Ford and its suppliers added up to.

For job seekers, that is great news. For the city, it changes the question. A hub is also made of companies: the tool shop, the trucking firm, the maintenance contractor, the small parts maker that grows by serving the assembler. When the supply chain moves inside the gates, the jobs appear, but the web of businesses around them does not come along by itself.

There is also the road still to be traveled inside the factory. BYD continues to operate mainly as an assembly plant, with semi-finished kits arriving from China. Welding, painting and stamping are scheduled to start by the end of the year, and the announced goal is to pass 50% domestic parts in 2027. Today’s picture shows in the figures Anfavea released this week: of the 434,000 electrified cars sold in the country between January and September, 72,000 were classified as made in Brazil. The association represents the carmakers already established and has a side in this debate, but the order of magnitude shows how long the road is.

None of this diminishes what was achieved. Reopening a complex of that size in so little time is rare. Nor does it erase the 2024 episode, when workers from a contractor were rescued by the Labor Prosecutor’s Office, a reminder that how it is done matters as much as how fast. But direct employment is the part the company controls. The surrounding economy depends on more people.

It depends on the technical school that trains professionals for the supplier that has not yet arrived, on land licensed in a reasonable time, on a port that works, and on incentive rules that do not change with every government. It depends on local companies, which need to qualify to sell to a buyer with global standards. It depends, therefore, on the city, the state and the region’s business community. No factory builds a hub alone, and demanding from BYD what belongs to the surroundings is as mistaken as applauding without asking questions.

That is why the indicator that will say the most about Camaçari from here on is how many companies based in Bahia sell to the factory, and how much. That is the number that should open the second-anniversary review.

The lesson goes beyond Bahia. In Iracemápolis (São Paulo), the factory Mercedes closed now belongs to GWM. In Horizonte (Ceará), the former Troller plant was reopened as a multi-brand site. In all three cases, the second owner found what money does not buy quickly: people who already know how to do the work, roads, energy, a port. What each city does with its second chance is the part that does not come in the container.

How many Brazilian cities have a factory asleep, waiting for a second owner? And how many will be ready when it arrives?

For decision-makers

The indicator that will say the most about Camaçari is how many companies based in Bahia sell to the factory, and how much.

If you are 20

Welding, painting and stamping are scheduled to start by the end of the year. It is technical work, and anyone training for it now arrives at the right time.

Originally published in Portuguese in Movimento Econômico.

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By Paulo Sombra, director of ISBR.