The watchman who picked mangoes
Sebastião Martins de Araújo was born in 1957 in the sertão, the arid backlands of Paraíba, one of five siblings. He started working young, in the fields, pulling out tree stumps to clear the land.
Years later, in Rio de Janeiro, he was hired as a night watchman at a firm whose yard was full of mango trees heavy with fruit. When his shift ended, early in the morning, Sebastião would pick the ripe mangoes — with his manager’s permission — and sell them door to door on his way home. The profit, he split with the manager.
It went so well that, in 1977, he quit.
From backyards to the CEASA market
Without the firm’s mango trees, he began buying fruit from neighbors’ backyards to resell. Door-to-door selling led to a stand at the street market. The street market led, in 1997, to half a rented stall at the CEASA wholesale market in Rio de Janeiro.
It was there that the market began calling him by the name that became a company: Sebastião da Manga. From half a stall, the operation grew into four leading stores within the CEASA market in Irajá.
From trading to growing
In 2002, Sebastião discovered the São Francisco Valley — the irrigated region along the river that supplied his stores in Rio. There he saw the next step: to stop simply buying fruit and start growing it.
He started with 15 hectares. Today there are 10 farms, 700 hectares in production, more than 500 direct jobs and a new 9,000-square-meter packing house — with our own distribution network in Europe and a presence in Brazil and South America. The United States is the next destination, with expansion already underway.
A family business
The business remains in the hands of those who built it: Sebastião and Ana Maria de Lima Araújo, and their sons Robson — leading all production and processing since 2002 — and Ronaldo, in charge of sales since the very first stall at CEASA.
The mango that was once picked in a company yard now ships to retail chains and wholesalers on three continents.
