[4][5][6] Matarazzo, who was a farmer in his homeland and a peddler shortly after arriving in Brazil, started his business life with a small commercial house that sold lard in Sorocaba.

In the 1940s, at its peak, the group had more than 350 companies in the fields of food, textiles, beverages, land and sea transport, ports, railways, shipyards, metallurgy, agriculture, energy, banking, real estate and others.

Then he gathered resources and in 1883 he established the Casa Matarazzo in Sorocaba, a warehouse that sold basic goods, which can be considered his first business.

[9] In 1890 he moved to the São Paulo and, in the following year, with his brothers Giuseppe and Luigi, Francesco created the company Matarazzo S.A., which had 41 minority shareholders, mainly Italians.

Moinho Matarazzo, as it came to be called, was the largest industrial facility in the city of São Paulo, which processed 2,500 bags of flour a day, each weighing 44 kilograms.

Remaining faithful to the practice of investing in different branches of the production chain, he created a cotton weaving company, starting from the sack section of his mill.

Under the motto of “a good deal is made in the purchase, not in the sale”,[11] Francesco Matarazzo was increasingly expanding the company's set of manufacturing units and its range of products.

[12] Factories of various branches were installed there, such as sawmills, refineries, distillers, slaughterhouses, carts, soaps, perfumes, fertilizers and insecticides, candles, nails and liquors.

[15] Francesco Matarazzo died in 1937, being the owner of the fifth largest fortune in the world at the time, with an estimated net worth of 20 billion dollars in current values.

Concerned with the recent shocks, Francesco Matarazzo Júnior hired the international consultancy Deloitte in order to improve the business, but the action did not work.

Indústrias Reunidas Fábricas Matarazzo was still the largest business conglomerate in Brazil, and Maria decided to concentrate production on the most successful sectors: paper, chemicals and alcohol.

Deep in debt due to unpaid loans, the IRFM had several buildings foreclosed, including the entire Água Branca industrial park.