Agro Pucala S.A.A.

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What it is

Agro Pucalá is an agro-industrial company dedicated to growing sugar cane and turning it into sugar and alcohol. It also owns and operates an alcohol distillery with a capacity of roughly 60,000 litres a day.

The business traces its roots to March 1908, when the Sociedad Agrícola Pucalá was constituted in what is today Lambayeque — a cane-growing region on Peru’s northern coast — with roughly 70% Peruvian capital and 30% foreign investors. The company was formerly known as La Sociedad Agrícola Pucalá Ltda., was refounded in its present form in 1908, and is based in Chiclayo, Peru.

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Who owns it

The ownership dispute traces to 12 March 1996, when a Fujimori-era decree converted Peru’s sugar cooperatives into joint-stock companies and turned their debts — owed to the state and private creditors — into shares. That conversion created a shareholder register so disputed it has never been formally ratified by a duly convened general meeting.

In September 1999 a Panamanian company called Cromwell Assets, formed by Jaime Mur Campoverde, acquired 51.4% of the shares; it then ran up debts with what is now Scotiabank, and eventually transferred those shares to the bank as partial payment, making Scotiabank the majority shareholder for a period. For more than fifteen years, the company has been unable to resolve its judicial dispute or convene a full shareholders’ meeting.

The precise current ownership split is not disclosed in available sources.

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Who runs it

The company is governed by court-appointed administrators — a panel designated by a civil court in Chiclayo. Agro Pucalá is one of the oldest sugar mills in Lambayeque and has been undergoing a restructuring process that has generated both expectations and legal battles.

The names of any current chief executive or chief financial officer are not disclosed in available sources; effective control rests with the judicial administration, not with a conventional board. The regional labour authority has, however, formally registered a new workers’ union executive — led by Grimaldo Cadenillas Uceda with a mandate running to January 2027 — as a recognised counterpart in labour negotiations.

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The money, in plain words

In the most recent twelve months on record, the company brought in PEN 25.61M (~US$7.5M) in sales but lost PEN 30.43M (~US$8.95M) — meaning it lost about PEN 1.19 (US$0.35)for every sol of revenue it earned, a net margin of –118.8% (our calculation), which is not a rounding error but a structural crisis.

The company carries PEN 92.82M (~US$27.3M) in debt against almost no cash — a net debt position of roughly PEN 92.8M (~US$27.3M) (our calculation), a debt load more than three times its annual revenue. A current ratio of 0.11 means the company has roughly eleven cents of short-term assets for every sol of short-term obligations — severely illiquid by any standard.

Return on equity is –11.48%, and return on invested capital is –3.34%, confirming that every sol put to work in the business is being eroded, not grown. No dividend is paid.

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What it is doing now

On 22 August 2025, the Junta de Acreedores — the creditors’ assembly — approved a Patrimonial Restructuring Plan. The plan contemplates leasing out 4,422 hectares of farmland as the primary mechanism for economic recovery.

Workers have challenged the plan in court, accusing the company of unilaterally cutting wages below the legal minimum and of failing to properly disclose the plan’s approval. They also contest what they say is a failure to publish required notices on the SMV’s regulatory portal.

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What to watch

• Restructuring plan outcome: The case will now move to a higher court, which must rule on whether labour rights were violated. The ruling will determine whether the land-lease plan survives legally.
• Ownership resolution: More than fifteen years of inability to hold a proper shareholders’ meeting means that until a clean share register is established, no strategic investor can take control — and no recovery can be financed in the ordinary way.
• Sugar price pressure: The price of raw sugar in Peru has already fallen sharply year-on-year, squeezing all mills in the sector even as Pucalá’s costs remain fixed and its debt load does not.
• Liquidity cliff: With a current ratio of 0.11 and net debt of ~PEN 92.8M (~US$27.3M) against annual revenue of only ~PEN 25.6M (~US$7.5M), even a modest operating shock could trigger insolvency proceedings beyond the existing restructuring.

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This is news, not investment advice.