On May 13th, 1976 Tecnal was founded, specialized in projects, research and development of vegetable oil extraction processes. On October 12th, 1976 it was founded TNL – Indústria Mecânica Ltda. with the purpose to manufacture the equipment developed by Tecnal. Both companies were founded by Ary Pocay, a true entrepreneur and visionary. Mr. Pocay´s history was marked by hard work and achievements, revealing a daring spirit of a humble man that won by working hard and on his own.
In 1977 we delivered the first complete oil extraction plant, with the collaboration of our partner Eng. Carlos Sorgi. From then on the progress was fast; Tecnal and TNL conquered the market with their technology and equipment.
TNL TECNAL presented to the market the “expansion technology” never seen before: the Expander for expansion of soybean flakes, for improvements of oil extraction. At first, this was adopted only by a few Brazilian companies.
But soon after the expanders were also installed in several processing lines of multinational companies located in Brazil and soon our Expanders drew attention of their headquarters (especially North Americans).
In 1978 we provided eight expanders of 8” to Anderson Clayton in United States to process cottonseed. The company manager, Mr. William Bill Hendricks, was interested in retiring from the company and turned out to be our first representative outside Brazil.
Soon after, the expander technology, until then unknown by most of United States companies, was disseminated through the American Chemists Oil society (AOCS) meetings and short-courses for supervisors at Food & Protein Research and Development Center of Texas A&M University (College Station, TX). Bill Hendricks inspired the man who became the best known expander supporter in the field of vegetable oil researches, Les Watkins, General Chief of Food & Protein R&D of Texas A&M. In the beginning of the 80’s he visited our expanders in operation in Ponta Grossa, PR, processing cottonseed, and in Araucária, PR, processing soybean. He got very impressed with what he saw and started spreading out the news around world.
After the first units started working with soybean in the US, our expanding process was spread out and consolidated all over the world.
By the middle of the 80’s, with the agribusiness growing in Brazil, TNL TECNAL entered the market for grain storage and provided hundreds of units of small, medium and large sizes. Attending from small farmers to big industries, our installations cover operations of pre cleaning, drying, cleaning, grain storage and conveyance with capacities up to 300 t/h.
TNL TECNAL enters the market for animal feed industry, which introduced equipment for pet food line, including extrusion, drying and cooling, and later, production of poultry and swine feed with the expander. Today TNL TECNAL installs complete plants in Brazil and abroad.