Car shielding: market in SP overcomes pre-pandemic – 09/06/2023 – Market

It was after being robbed in Itaim Bibi, a neighborhood on the west side of São Paulo, that businessman Marcelo Sarfatti, 56, decided to start armoring his cars. “It was Christmas Eve. After the robbery, I went to a [unidade] from a friend of mine’s Mitsubishi and I left there with an armored car, because he had ready delivery.”

Today, about 25 years later, Sarfatti claims that, over that time, he has armored more than 20 cars. This time, he says he is disbursing R$ 185 thousand for the armor of two recently acquired vehicles, a BMW X1 and an electric car from the Chinese BYD.

Impacted by the low supply of the auto industry in the pandemic, the vehicle armor sector has been recovering in sales. In the first four months of the year, nearly 8,400 armor declarations were issued for vehicles across the country, according to data from Sicovab (Control System for Armored Motor Vehicles and Ballistic Armor), which is managed by the Army.

The number represents a jump of approximately 16% compared to the same period last year and is already established at a level much higher than that recorded in 2019, before the pandemic.

At Carbon Blindados, a company located in Barueri (SP), the last year was a record year for offering the service, with around 3,700 armored cars. “Our number was increasing. The pandemic cut this growth, but, in the sequence, it resumed”, says the company’s director, Daniel Deleu.

Despite receiving vehicles from all over the country to do the armouring, Deleu claims that São Paulo is the strongest market for the segment. “São Paulo varies from 60% to 70% of our sales”, he says.

According to the Detran-SP, there were 5,945 armored vehicles in the first four months of this year. It is the first time that the state has exceeded the pre-pandemic level observed in 2019, when 4,400 shields were registered.

For Eduardo Rocha, CEO of VRZ Blindados, which also targets people from São Paulo, the concentration of the market in the region can be attributed to a cultural issue. “São Paulo is the big center, where the market started”.

From São Bernardo do Campo, VRZ started operating in 2018, armoring 10 to 15 cars a month, according to Rocha. Today there are around 200 vehicles a month, he says.

According to Marcelo Christiansen, partner-owner of BSS Blindagens, the sector has been boosted by crimes that have become known in the city of São Paulo, such as breaking vehicle windows to rob drivers and passengers. He also cites hijackers who force victims to transfer money through Pix.

According to Christiansen, BSS has armored around 1,400 cars in the last 12 months —400 more than registered in 2021.

“We’ve already made more than 1,400. The pandemic hit vehicle delivery and availability at dealerships the most. Consequently, the armor market was affected. But, in the pre-pandemic, Brazil was already a country in crisis. armor market was in 2014. That year, we armored around 1,700 cars”, he says.

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See what are the stages of armoring a vehicle:*

• Army authorization application
• Vehicle disassembly: removal of seats and other components from the interior of the car
• Application of aramid, a high strength synthetic fiber material, and stainless steel
• Glass installation
• Reassembly of the inner part
• Electrical, running tests, among others

*materials and stages may vary according to the assembler and shield design

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The sector experienced uncertainty in the first months of the Lula government

In February of this year, armor companies reported uncertainties about the continuation of their activities after President Lula (PT) decided to revoke the decree of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) that facilitated access to firearms, in January.

The PT government’s measure was aimed at CACs (hunters, shooters and collectors), the category most benefited by rules issued in the past government that facilitated the population’s arming.

Marcelo Silva, president of Abrablin, says that a succession of errors has jeopardized the driving of armored vehicles. The first was that the activity was unnecessarily “placed in the bulge” of the weapons by Bolsonaro’s decree, as it was not subject to the same certification and, therefore, did not depend on a new release.

In addition, he argues, the damage to the armored vehicle segment could have been avoided if Lula’s revocation had been more specific, directed only at the sections of the decree that dealt with weapons and ammunition.

In the same month, the government released a note saying that the revocation of the decree would not interfere with the sector’s activity and that the posts on social networks that claimed that President Lula had “banned” the shielding were not true.

“That problem of repealing the ordinance was a one-off problem and, in my opinion, it was a succession of mistakes. But it was remedied and, once the problem was solved, the market returned to normality”, says Silva.

For this year, he projects stability in sales compared to last year. “The most optimistic people believe that it should grow by 10%. I am still being conservative because of the economy itself, which is not as heated as it was last year”, he says.