Internacional Briquettes Holding

What it is

Internacional Briquettes Holding (IBH) is a holding company with investments in businesses dedicated to the production and marketing of iron briquettes and the sale of industrial parts and spare parts. That description is aspirational: since June 2009, IBH’s actual activities have been limited to the trading of goods of various kinds directed at industrial sectors globally, including machinery, equipment, industrial spare parts, raw materials, and intermediate and finished products.

IBH and its subsidiaries were originally dedicated to the production of hot-briquetted iron (HBI), a raw material for steel mills, with operating plants in Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, and a combined nominal design capacity of 3,020,000 metric tons per year. Both plants — Venprecar, located in the industrial zone of Matanzas, Puerto Ordaz, a Midrex technology plant with nominal capacity of 815,000 metric tons per year, and Orinoco Iron, also in Matanzas, a Finmet technology plant with nominal capacity of 2.2 million metric tons per year — were taken from IBH by the Venezuelan state in 2010.

Who owns it

As of September 30, 2011, Sivensa held a 68.54% stake in International Briquettes Holding (IBH). That figure is the last confirmed ownership fraction from Sivensa’s own audited filings and has not been revised in subsequent annual reports.

Approximately 18% of IBH’s shares are in the hands of the public and trade on the Bolsa de Valores de Caracas or in the US over-the-counter market.

From the date of the nationalisation announcement of Venprecar and Orinoco Iron in 2009, and until mid-2013, the efforts of the board and management of IBH to negotiate and reach an agreement with the national government on the fair value of those companies proved fruitless. The claim is still open: IBH management considers that, due to actions taken by the Venezuelan state, it lost the ability to direct the financial and operational policies of Venprecar and Orinoco Iron; the book value of the investment at the time the companies ceased to be consolidated was treated as cost and classified as an investment available for sale, described as “Investments in companies under nationalisation.”

Who runs it

Neil J. Malloy signed the notice convening IBH’s Annual General Meeting in December 2024 as President, making him the confirmed head of the board as of the most recent exchange filing on the Bolsa de Valores de Caracas.

No CFO or separate executive director is named in publicly available BVC or SUNAVAL filings reviewed for this profile.

Not published: the names of other current board members and any senior management beyond the President are not disclosed in the BVC convocatoria, the IBH company website, or the SUNAVAL-filed Sivensa consolidated accounts reviewed. Venezuela’s Ley de Mercado de Valores requires listed issuers to file annual governance disclosures with SUNAVAL, but IBH’s individual governance filing was not publicly accessible in the sources reviewed.

The money, in plain words

IBH is, in financial terms, a claims vehicle more than a trading company. Its income from actual commerce is tiny: in the last year for which IBH filed its own audited stand-alone accounts, fiscal year ending 30 September 2013, it earned US$654,000 in commercial service revenues and recorded a net loss of US$242,000 — a net loss margin of 37% on a negligible revenue base.

Its true value, if any, sits in the unresolved compensation claim against the Venezuelan state for the seized plants.

IBH’s financial statements are prepared in US dollars — its functional currency — and then translated to bolívares for consolidation into Sivensa’s accounts under IAS 21; at 30 September 2024 the closing exchange rate used was Bs. 36.9227 per USD.

The net loss attributable to IBH’s minority shareholders — roughly the 31.5% not held by Sivensa — amounted to a loss of Bs. 10,677,258 in the fiscal year ending 30 September 2024, compared with a minority loss of just Bs.

47,878 in 2023. This sharp deterioration reflects a provision of Bs.

28,914,101 registered by IBH during FY2024.

What it is doing now

IBH’s most recent consolidated financial statements, for the year ending 30 September 2025, were approved by Sivensa’s board on 2 December 2025 and audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers Venezuela. The auditors issued an unqualified opinion but highlighted a going-concern uncertainty, noting that the outcome of the nationalisation claims could affect the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.

The IBH board presented accounts for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2024 at the AGM called for 11 December 2024.

The nationalisation claim remains the single live business event. From 2011 until June 2013, IBH representatives sent periodic communications to the Venezuelan authorities requesting resumption of negotiations to agree the fair price for the expropriated briquette companies.

More than a decade later, no payment has been made and no formal legal transfer of the assets to the state has been completed, meaning IBH still carries the book value of Venprecar and Orinoco Iron on its balance sheet as an asset under negotiation.

What to watch

• Compensation ruling. Any formal acknowledgment by Venezuela of fair value owed — or any court ruling by the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia on the annulment suits filed in 2014 — would be the single biggest value event for IBH shareholders.
• Share-trading status. IBH’s public offering was formally withdrawn by SUNAVAL in 2011. Investors should verify with the BVC and SUNAVAL whether any residual trading mechanism exists before assuming liquidity.
• Sivensa’s own survival. Sivensa, which controls 68.54% of IBH, has itself been stripped of its main industrial assets. Sivensa is the holding company of the Empresas Sivensa group, whose most important subsidiaries and/or their assets have been subject to various administrative measures — expropriation, nationalisation, occupation or equivalent measures — by the Venezuelan state.
• Governance disclosures. IBH’s most recent publicly available stand-alone annual report dates from 2013. Future SUNAVAL filings or BVC convocatorias naming the full board would be the first source of updated governance information.

This is news, not investment advice.