Mayagüez S.A.

What it is

Mayagüez S.A. is a Colombian agroindustrial company that produces, distributes, and sells brown, white, and raw sugar, honey, and other cane derivatives, including syrups and fuel-grade alcohol. It also runs a bagasse-biomass co-generation plant with 37 megawatts of installed capacity that sells surplus power to the Colombian national electricity grid.

The company operates its core facilities in the municipality of Candelaria, in the Valle del Cauca department, as well as in Nicaragua. It is the parent company of Grupo Mayagüez, a cluster that includes domestic and international businesses spanning sugar, biofuels, and bio-fertilisers.

Who owns it

Mayagüez was founded in 1937 by Don Nicanor Hurtado and his wife Ana Julia Holguín de Hurtado, who transformed a small artisan mill into the industrial base of what is today Mayagüez S.A. It has remained a family enterprise throughout its history.

Mayagüez S.A.’s shares are listed on Colombia’s National Securities Registry held by the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia, with 49,289,304 ordinary shares in circulation. The Holguín-Hurtado family descendants dominate the board; Liliana Vallecilla Martínez was named board chair for the 2023–2025 term and also presides over the Audit Committee.

Board members collectively held roughly 26.78% of shares at year-end 2023, per the company’s own governance filing.

Who runs it

The legal representative — Colombia’s equivalent of CEO — is Mauricio Iragorri Rizo, who signed the 2024 consolidated financial statements on 3 March 2025. Iragorri has publicly explained the group’s acquisition strategy as building larger production units to spread fixed costs and compete with sugar powerhouses such as Brazil.

The board itself is a five-member body; two of the five principals are independent directors, as required by Colombian law, and the 2023 assembly seated Jean Pierre Pascal Dupuy Holguín and Juan Rafael Hurtado Yoda as new members. The family’s continued presence is clear in surnames across the board: Holguín Ramos, Dupuy Holguín, Uribe Holguín.

The money, in plain words

In the first half of 2024 the group billed COP 779,450 million (~USD 226M) in consolidated revenue. Net profit for that same six months came to COP 41,637 million (~USD 12.1M) — meaning roughly 5.3 cents of profit survived from every peso of sales (a net profit margin of ~5.3%, our calculation), thin but typical for commodity-agricultural processors facing input and currency volatility.

The balance sheet at end-2024 shows total assets of COP 2,876,478M (~USD 833.6M), funded partly by COP 1,207,428M (~USD 350M) of financial debt against just COP 19,920M (~USD 5.8M) of cash — producing a net debt of COP 1,187,508M (~USD 344M, our calculation). That is a meaningful debt load relative to equity of COP 1,059,613M (~USD 307M), so interest costs and refinancing terms are a real variable the company must manage carefully.

The revenue mix in the most recent period on record shows sugar as the dominant line — COP 334,775 (US$97)M in H1 2025 — alongside ethanol at COP 130,587 (US$38)M (which grew 36% year-on-year) and electricity sales of COP 17,959 (US$5)M (up 17%). Ethanol’s strong growth signals that the diversification into biofuels is gaining commercial weight.

What it is doing now

In H1 2025, consolidated revenue rose 1% to COP 788,269 (US$228)M, but net profit fell 83% to COP 7,149 (US$2)M, largely because a stronger Colombian peso reduced the peso value of the group’s dollar-denominated export sales. The squeeze is a reminder that for an exporter priced in dollars, the exchange rate is nearly as important as the harvest.

The most significant recent strategic move was the acquisition of Ingenio Central Tumaco and its five associated farming companies for COP 335,776M (~USD 97M at current rates), adding roughly 400,000 tonnes of annual sugar production capacity — an 11% increase — to the group’s existing 2.5 million tonnes. The deal was executed via a public tender offer on the BVC.

What to watch

• Currency risk: A significant share of revenue is collected in US dollars; a strong Colombian peso directly compresses reported profits, as the H1 2025 results make clear.
• Debt serviceability: Net debt at ~USD 344M against half-year profits of ~USD 12M means the group lives or dies by its operating cash flow and refinancing access.
• Ethanol regulation: Colombia mandates fuel-ethanol blending; any change to that policy would directly hit what is currently the fastest-growing revenue line.
• Integration of Central Tumaco: Absorbing a large acquisition while carrying a heavy debt load tests management bandwidth and financial headroom simultaneously.
• Sugar commodity prices: Global raw-sugar prices set the floor for export revenues; a sustained downswing would pressure margins company-wide.

This is news, not investment advice.