Grupo Mateus restocks 300+ Amazon-region stores over a 2,700-km rail spine

Grupo Mateus, the retail group born in São Luís, Maranhão, now runs more than 300 stores across Brazil's North and Northeast — regions that sit up to 2,700 km from the São Paulo industries that supply most Brazilian retail. Serving those shelves with trucks alone is expensive, slow and unpredictable, which is why the group's answer has become a template in Brazilian logistics trade press.

Since August 2025 the group has replenished its northern distribution centers over a multimodal route built with Brado Logística: truck pickup at the factories, roughly 2,400 km on the Ferrovia Norte-Sul railway between Sumaré (SP) and Davinópolis (MA), then regional trucking to the São Luís and Santa Izabel do Pará DCs. By June 2026 the operation had moved 24,200 tons and 1,082 containers of fast-moving goods (Tecnologística). Grupo Mateus's VP for operations and logistics, Sandro Oliveira, credits the route with 'capacity, optimized flows, security and predictability of deliveries.'

The freight design is matched by a shelf design documented in a September 2026 SA+ interview: assortment is reviewed continuously and region by region — sales turns, stock coverage, dwell time, shelf-meter productivity, and each SKU's strategic role — but never by the chain average alone. Oliveira: understanding local consumption habits is essential, 'preserving products relevant to certain regions even when they behave differently from the network average.' The stated goal: 'not more products, but the right ones.'

Together the two moves close the loop that distance opens: rail compresses the cost and variance of the long haul, and regionalized assortment keeps inventory turns and margins high enough to pay for it — fewer ruptures, less operational complexity, more productive shelf meters.

Rail as the spine; trucks only at the two ends

Brazil's interior distances make road-only replenishment structurally uneconomic; rail carries the long middle at lower cost per ton-km with fewer accidents and thefts.

Trucks are kept for exactly the legs where flexibility matters — factory pickup and capillary final distribution — so no capacity is stranded.

Rail's schedule gives delivery predictability, which matters more the farther a store is from the supplier.

Regionalized assortment (data plus local habits) raises turns and shelf productivity, so the logistics savings compound instead of subsidizing slow SKUs.

Both pieces quote the operating executives rather than outside analysts — the design was invented at home, for the geography that made the company.

On very long distances, move the middle to the cheapest reliable mode and keep flexible trucks only where flexibility pays — then cut the SKUs that would waste the freight you just saved.

Brado and Grupo Mateus both state the route will keep expanding as the chain grows in the North and Northeast. The operation has become the reference case in Brazilian trade press for 'varejo troca rodovia por ferrovia' — retail swapping road for rail for scale — and the assortment program's published results (higher shelf productivity, better turns, fewer ruptures) indicate the freight gains are holding at the shelf.