Surpapelcorp S.A.

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What it is

Surpapelcorp is a paper manufacturer that uses 100% recycled raw materials; it owns the Surpapel Group’s paper mill — the second-largest in Ecuador — and produces recycled corrugated paper primarily for sister company Procarsa’s production needs.

The mill was put into operation in 2012, with an initial annual production capacity of approximately 120,000 metric tonnes. The plant represented a combined national and foreign investment of approximately US$100 million.

Surpapelcorp was born as a project of the Surpapel Group specifically to integrate the group’s corrugated-cardboard operations; the investment created a paper-making line supplying recycled corrugated paper to sister companies Procarsa and Incarpalm, with the explicit aim of reducing those companies’ dependence on imported raw material.

Who owns it

Surpapelcorp is part of the Surpapel Group, which comprises Comercializadora de Papeles y Cartones Surpapel S.A., Incarpalm Industria Cartonera Palmar S.A., Productora Cartonera S.A. (Procarsa), Soluciones de Empaques SDE S.A., and Repapers Reciclaje del Ecuador S.A. Comercializadora de Papeles y Cartones Surpapel S.A. functions as the group’s holding vehicle.

The group’s origins trace to 2009, when a group of investors — acting through the holding company — acquired 100% of Procarsa from Dole in an open sale process, positioning it as the region’s strongest cardboard producer. The group now holds a 23% market share in Ecuador’s paper and cardboard market.

Not published: the precise ownership percentages of individual shareholders in Surpapelcorp S.A. are not disclosed in the BVG issuer filings or FinDev Canada transaction documents reviewed. Ecuador’s Ley de Mercado de Valores and the Superintendencia de Compañías (SCVS) require issuers of public commercial paper to disclose beneficial ownership in their offering circulars; however, the SCVS portal (supercias.gob.ec) requires authenticated JavaScript sessions to retrieve the relevant filing, and the circulars reviewed via the Bolsa de Valores Quito do not specify individual percentage stakes.

The free float is effectively zero for equity purposes, as the company lists only debt.

Who runs it

Oscar Antonio Illingworth Guerrero serves as Gerente General (Chief Executive) and legal representative of Surpapelcorp S.A., signing off on the company’s public capital-market disclosures in that capacity. He is also a board member and shareholder of the company.

Antonia Patiño serves as a board director of the Surpapel Group and VP of Procarsa. Not published: the identities of a separate CFO or board chair for Surpapelcorp specifically are not disclosed in any BVG, BVQ, or SCVS filing reviewed.

The money, in plain words

Not published: Surpapelcorp’s standalone annual revenue, net profit, net margin, return on equity, and total assets are not available in any publicly accessible primary source. The company’s audited financial statements are filed with the SCVS under Ecuador’s Ley de Compañías (Art.

20), but the SCVS portal (appscvsgen.supercias.gob.ec and appscvsmovil.supercias.gob.ec) requires authenticated, JavaScript-enabled sessions that did not render retrievable data. EMIS holds the most recent figures (through 2024) behind a commercial paywall.

The BVG issuer page and the BVQ commercial-paper offering circulars confirm active debt issuance but publish no income-statement figures.

What the filings do confirm is the company’s debt load. As of January 2025, US$9.85 million of the authorized US$10 million Second Commercial Paper Programme was in circulation — a revolving short-term debt facility used, per the offering circular, entirely to refinance existing short-term obligations.

Beyond the commercial paper, FinDev Canada’s US$15M blended-finance loan (US$12M direct; US$3M via the 2X Canada Facility) was added in April 2024 to an existing syndicated loan of US$82.5M led by Cordiant Capital and including Trilinc Global, Finnfund, BIO, and IFU, bringing the total syndicated facility to US$97.5M. That is a substantial debt book for a single paper mill, and it signals that lenders — including development-finance institutions with rigorous credit analysis — regard the underlying industrial asset and cash flows as bankable.

What it is doing now

The most recent material move for the group is the April 2024 approval by FinDev Canada of a US$15 million blended-finance loan to support an increase in Surpapelcorp’s production capacity while reducing its carbon footprint. The group is also deepening its circular-economy model: its Repapers subsidiary collects cardboard from more than 2,000 informal recyclers across Ecuador, feeding that waste material directly into Surpapelcorp’s mill as raw input.

The group has been designated a key partner in Ecuador’s National Strategy and Action Plan for the Circular Economy Transition. The company is also actively expanding female representation at the board and production levels in what remains a heavily male-dominated industry.

What to watch

• Debt maturity management. The Second Commercial Paper Programme was due to mature on 4 May 2025. Watch for whether a Third Programme is authorized by the SCVS, and at what yield — that rate will be the market’s current verdict on the company’s credit quality.
• Capacity expansion. The FinDev Canada loan is earmarked for production-capacity investment; any upgrade at the mill — which already runs near 120,000 tonnes per year — would tighten Surpapelcorp’s grip on the position as Ecuador’s dominant domestic paper supplier to the corrugated-box industry.
• Financial transparency. The company publishes no standalone investor-relations site, and its financials are locked behind the SCVS portal. For any investor or lender doing their own analysis, the SCVS authenticated portal and the BVQ/BVG offering-circular archive (which carry balance-sheet summaries in the prospectus appendices) are the only public routes to audited numbers.
• Sector headwinds. Ecuador’s economy is exposed to commodity-export cycles; the banana, fish, and flower exporters that drive demand for corrugated boxes remain Procarsa’s (and thus Surpapelcorp’s) primary end-market. A soft harvest year or export disruption flows directly to paper-roll volumes.

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This is news, not investment advice.