Context: How Bolsa de Valores de Asuncion works, and what it makes issuers disclose · Paraguay on the LatAm Power Map
Bricapar turns sawmill waste and forest residues into charcoal and briquettes bound for barbecues in Germany, the United States, Korea and twenty other countries — a niche that has made it Paraguay’s biggest charcoal exporter. Right now, that same niche is squeezing it hard.
| Key Facts — BRICAPAR S.A.E. | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Bricapar S.A.E. (Sociedad Anónima Emisora) |
| Ticker / Exchange | BRI — Bolsa de Valores y Productos de Asunción (BVPASA); bonds listed on Bolsa de Valores de Asunción (BVA) |
| Headquarters | Asunción, Paraguay; plant at Villa Hayes / Remansito, Ruta Py 09 km 25.5 |
| Sector | Forestry-derived energy — charcoal and wood-charcoal briquette manufacturing and export |
| Employees | ~150 direct; ~250 indirect (FEPAMA, 2023) |
| Market value (market cap) | Not published: Bricapar is listed as a bond issuer, not in equity trading; no share price or equity market cap is quoted on BVA or BVPASA filings reviewed. |
| Yearly sales (revenue) | Gs 55,417 million (~US$9.1M) — trailing 12 months to Sep 2025 (our calculation: Gs ÷ 6,061.49); management data Dec 2025: ~US$4.7M; Dec 2024: ~US$7.4M |
| Net profit | Not published: the Dec 2024 annual accounts were qualified by auditors and not considered to present a true and fair view; net profit figures for the most recent full year are therefore not verifiable from sources accessed (FIX SCR May 2026 report; BCP Superintendencia de Valores filing). |
| Net margin | Negative in the last three years; cost of goods sold reached 97% of revenue to Dec 2025 (vs. a historical average of ~81%), eliminating any operating profit. |
| Total assets | Gs 197,447 million (~US$32.6M) at Sep 2025 (our calculation) |
| Financial debt | Gs 126,357 million (~US$20.9M) at Sep 2025 (our calculation) |
| Return on equity | Not calculable: net profit not published; equity was negative in the period prior to Aug 2025 shareholder recapitalisation. |
| Price-to-earnings | Not applicable: no equity market price available. |
| Dividend yield | Not applicable. |
| Credit rating | Bpy / pyB (Stable) — FIX SCR (Fitch affiliate), 13 May 2026 |
| Website | bricapar.com |
What it is
Bricapar was founded in 1997 and is oriented to the exploitation of the country’s forest resources, manufacturing charcoal and briquettes for export, primarily to North American, Chilean, Turkish and Korean markets. It makes, stockpiles and packages charcoal, charcoal briquettes and activated charcoal for catering, household and industrial use, selling most of its output internationally; the charcoal products are made from residues and fines sourced from its own charcoal classification operations and from classifiers in greater Asunción.
Briquettes are bound with food-grade vegetable starch — cassava or maize — with no chemical additives, preserving the natural wood-smoke aroma; the manufacturing process meets the European Union quality standard ISO EN 1860-2. Its products reach demanding markets under its own brand or clients’ brands in Germany, Chile, Korea, Costa Rica, Spain, the United States, Greece, Guatemala, the Netherlands, England, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Panama, Turkey, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Who owns it
Bricapar is controlled by the Jiménez Gaona family, which holds directly or indirectly 54.49% of the shares and economic rights; Spanish company IBECOSOL holds a minority stake of 21%. IBECOSOL handles Bricapar’s commercial policy in Europe, its largest export market.
The remaining free float is not separately itemised in the sources reviewed.
The company is part of Grupo Conempa, a group of at least ten Paraguayan businesses. The rating improvement was partly driven by shareholders recapitalising the company with fresh equity.
However, FIX SCR assessed Bricapar on a stand-alone basis, since group companies do not share credit lines, guarantees or intercompany loans.
Who runs it
The president of the company, as registered with the Superintendencia de Valores of Paraguay’s central bank, is Ing. Agr.
Manuel Jiménez Gaona. The position of CFO or separate board chair is not disclosed in the exchange filings or the FIX SCR rating report reviewed.
A full name on regulatory forestry management documents reads Manuel Guillermo Jiménez Gaona A.
The money, in plain words
Bricapar reported sales of US$4.7 million to December 2025 — management data provided to the rating agency — a substantial fall from US$7.4 million in December 2024. Over the trailing twelve months to September 2025, revenues in local currency were Gs 55,417 million (approximately US$9.1 million at today’s rate — our calculation).
The revenue decline of roughly 36% in dollar terms between 2024 and 2025 management data illustrates how fast the business contracted.
The company has not earned an operating profit for at least three years. To December 2025, operating earnings before interest and depreciation (EBITDA) were negative US$0.5 million — a margin of negative 14%, a sharp worsening from December 2024 when that figure stood at positive US$2.5 million.
The proximate cause: higher land-freight costs from rains blocking raw material access in 2023, combined with drought that reduced water levels on the Paraná-Paraguay waterway, pushing river freight rates above pre-pandemic levels. The company carries financial debt of around Gs 126,357 million (US$20.9 million — our calculation) against a total asset base of Gs 197,447 million (US$32.6 million).
That debt-to-operating-earnings ratio — a standard measure of how many years of profit it would take to pay off all borrowings — stood at 7.7 times to September 2025, which most analysts regard as high. The Superintendencia de Valores suspended Bricapar from raising fresh capital on the primary market on 1 April 2025, citing failure to file its annual report for the year ended 31 December 2024 on time, as required by Resolution SV SG N° 0022/2024.
The December 2024 financial statements that were eventually filed were qualified by the external auditors, who concluded they did not fairly present the company’s financial position.
What it is doing now
In May 2026, FIX SCR upgraded Bricapar’s issuer rating to Bpy (from Cpy) and its bond programme to pyB (from pyC), assigning a Stable outlook; the improvement was grounded in shareholders’ recapitalisation of the company and their absorption of bank debt. In August 2025, owners injected approximately US$4.5 million in fresh equity, paying down suppliers and bank lenders and restoring positive net worth.
A further commitment of approximately US$5.3 million — approved by the board in December 2025 — is intended to effectively cancel remaining bank obligations by converting them into shareholder loans.
The rating is still constrained by sustained margin deterioration, three consecutive years of negative operating cash flow and tight liquidity for meeting debt payments. The rating agency is watching for a potential new long-term supply agreement with a European buyer that could rebuild export volumes, which fell 58% in 2025 compared with 2024.
The restructured bond programme now pushes the bulk of principal repayments — US$13.9 million — to 2031, buying the company time.
This is news, not investment advice.
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