Grupo Sos dismantles the Projecto Tierra

The company closes down in Portugal, Morocco and Tunisia and all the assets are acquired by the Portuguese society Sovena which is more and more challenging the leadership of the Spanish competitor

by T N

The Spanish group Sos just wants to care about commercialization now on. After the announcement of the stop at the Projecto Tierra, the Salazar brothers, that, besides being market leaders, were trying to conquer to world of production, now permanently make all the productive asset over. In the three years the project went on the company lost more than 72 million euro, too much for a company indebted for 1.3 billion euro.

The whole asset has been acquired by the Portuguese company Sovena for 92 million euro, 8 less than budgeted for by the Sos governing body. For this reason the Sos already announced the will to sell other small societies in order to get the estimated 100 million euro. Sovena acquires 20 farms for a total terrain of 5200 hectares, 100 employees and 9 million euro managing cost per year. In this way Sovena seems to succeed in building the new empire of oil, dreamed by the Salazar brothers, since they already have other 5000 hectares, 4000 in Portugal and 1000 in Extremadura, respectively.

After this transaction, Sovena, controlled by Mercadona of Juan Roig and Atitlan of Roberto Centino, is the second company of the olive oil market, being able to commercialize 180.000 tons per year, against the 300.000 tons of Sos.

As said, Sos has in mind other sales. As a matter of fact, they put on the market the rice division, for an estimated value of 200 million euro, and they could probably do the same of the table olive division. By means of these transactions, together with the sale of some real estates, the Sos Cuerta managing body budgets for collecting 500 million euro circa. At the same time they will launch a capital increase for 200 million euro in order to halve in total their debt with the banks and to concentrate their activity toward the oil commercialization. As a matter of fact, Sos is also leader in the market of seed oils, with more than 100.000 tons sold per year.