Automotive and aeronautical clusters in the São Paulo state’s Vale do Paraíba: a comparison of formation trajectories

This paper presents a comparison of the relevant characteristics of São Paulo State’s Vale do Paraíba automotive and aerospace clusters observed and analyzes the technological and productive chains strengthening. In order to accomplish it, the adopted methodological procedures are of qualitative nature, by means of documentary research. The results pointed out that the government established, in the mid-1945, the currently named Departamento de Ciência e Tecnologia Aeroespacial (DCTA), as a research and development (R&D) center and, by 1979, Embraer, a state-owned aeronautical construction industry. It was also sought to generate conditions so that domestic companies could emerge around and replace the dependency on aerospace systems and subsystems international suppliers by developing indigenous technological capacities. The automotive cluster under study started in the São Paulo State’s Vale do Paraíba (PPV) by means of the regionalization of multinational automotive construction firms migrated from ABC Paulista region looking for physical space for their growth, also relying on tax benefits. The survey results indicate that, in spite of fundamental differences with regard to their productive chains strenghtening processes, they showed similar adverse results