ALEMÁN PARAGUAYO CANADIENSE S.A. (ALPACASA)

What it is

ALPACASA, founded in 1998, extracts, distils, stores, and exports essential oils — think petit grain, palo santo, vetiver, and cabreuva — and trades organic and conventional grains (chia and sesame) to international buyers; in a smaller way it also sells plant-based ingredients and biomass.

About 94% of its sales in the first nine months of 2024 went abroad, making it a pure export company; most costs, however, are in guaraníes, so swings in the exchange rate flow straight into its results.

Essential oils — historically the company’s heartland — once made up more than half of revenue, but their share has fallen steadily, dropping to under 40% by 2021–22, as grain trading took over as the engine of growth.

Who owns it

This is a tightly held family company. According to the Feller Rate classification report of December 2024, Hans Karl Janz Janzen controls ALPACASA directly, holding 89.57% of the company.

The free float in public hands is therefore minimal and relates only to bond investors, not shareholders.

Hans Karl Janz co-founded the company in 1998 alongside his parents and siblings; he studied law at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción, sits as a director of the Paraguayan-German Chamber of Commerce, and also directs Alpacasa BV, the Dutch holding entity.

Who runs it

Hans Karl Janz Janzen serves as President of ALPACASA, confirmed in the company’s filing with the Superintendencia de Valores of the Banco Central del Paraguay. Cinthia Diana Leguizamón Báez appears alongside him in the public contracts registry as a key officer of the company.

Not published: the name of the CFO and the full composition of the board are not disclosed in the BVA filings, the Superintendencia de Valores page, or the Feller Rate reports reviewed. Paraguay’s securities regulator (Resolution SV) requires quarterly periodic reporting but does not mandate publication of full board biographies in the exchange filing.

The money, in plain words

In 2024, ALPACASA’s consolidated revenue reached Gs$ 144,239 million (~US$ 23.8 million), a jump of 59.9% over 2023 — the biggest single-year leap in its recent history, driven almost entirely by higher grain volumes after the company expanded its storage and processing capacity.

At the same time, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA — the operating cash the business generates before financing costs) reached Gs$ 31,943 million (~US$ 5.3 million), up 97.7% on the year before; the EBITDA margin — how much operating profit sits in every guaraní of sales — rose to 22.1% from 17.9%.

Not published: ALPACASA’s audited net profit (after interest and tax) for FY 2024 is not disclosed in the BVA public filings or in the Feller Rate classification reports reviewed. Paraguay’s securities regulator requires quarterly financial summaries, but the detailed income statement with a bottom-line net profit figure was not publicly accessible in the primary sources searched.

Total financial debt peaked at Gs$ 111,603 million (~US$ 18.4 million) at end-2024; the debt-to-equity ratio (leverage) eased to 1.3 times — still elevated against pre-2020 levels of around 0.4 times but moving in the right direction. Net debt relative to operating earnings (net debt / EBITDA) fell to 2.5 times, down from 4.7 times in 2023 — meaning the company’s debt pile shrank to about two-and-a-half years of operating earnings, a meaningful improvement.

What it is doing now

ALPACASA is in the middle of issuing a new US$ 10 million bond programme (PEG USD5), allocating the proceeds 40% to working capital, 30% to refinancing existing debt, and 30% to building a new peanut processing plant.

The first four series of that programme began placing in June 2025 at the Bolsa de Valores de Asunción, at a coupon rate of 7.40%, with subsequent series continuing through September 2025 — a sign that investor appetite for the paper remains solid.

What to watch

• Debt reduction: Feller Rate’s “Strong (+)” trend is conditional on ALPACASA continuing to convert its higher earnings into lower debt; the agency expects medium-term contracts to stabilise cash flows and support further deleveraging.
• FX risk: Because the company earns most of its revenue in hard currency but pays most of its costs in guaraníes, any sharp move in the PYG/USD rate can flatter or punish results quickly.
• Grain concentration: Grain now accounts for more than three-quarters of revenue; a bad harvest or a collapse in global chia or sesame prices would hit hard, since essential oils — still the highest-margin line — no longer compensate at scale.
• Regulatory compliance: In August 2024 the Superintendencia de Valores suspended ALPACASA from issuing new securities for missing a quarterly filing deadline; the suspension was lifted in September 2024 after the company regularised its reporting — a reminder that disclosure discipline matters as the bond programme expands.

This is news, not investment advice.