In 1929 it had 27km of railway that connected to the Great Western line, four locomotives and 44 wagons (from 8 to 10 tonnes). It had the capacity to process 400 tonnes of sugarcane and manufacture 3,000 litres of ethanol in 22 hours.

The name originates from the fields of the Minho region in Portugal. The word ‘cachaça’, however, never caught on in either that country or in Spain. The oldest recorded of the word is from the 16th century.

Founded in 1890, with the name Correia da Silva factory, in honour of the State’s vice-governor at the time, it was originally built by the Englishman Carlos Sinden and his father-in-law Felipe Paes de Oliveira. This name, however, was never recognised, and the factory was always called ‘Catende’.

It originated in 1918, on the Genipapo plantation in Timbaúba, where Manoel Caetano Pereira de Queiroz had founded his factory, also calling it Genipapo.

The manufacture of brown sugar bricks began in the 16th century on the Spanish-owned Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The product was exported to all of Spanish America in the 17th century during the period of great sugarcane expansion.