Sociedad Agroindustrial Nutrioil S.A.

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What it is

Nutrioil was founded on 26 July 2010 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra to fill gaps in Bolivia’s food-production chain — specifically the missing infrastructure for storing, processing and exporting farm output. It was born out of the global food crisis and the need to grow Bolivia’s agricultural export capacity with higher-value, export-ready products.

The heart of the company is a soybean crushing plant with a capacity of 1,300 tonnes per day, producing soybean meal (the protein used in animal feed), crude soybean oil, and husks. Its single sharpest competitive edge is Puerto Jennefer — Bolivia’s first international multimodal port, located in Santa Cruz department and connected to the Paraguay–Paraná waterway, which carries those products efficiently to the Atlantic and on to world markets.

The company built its first grain collection silo in January 2014 in the Pailón farming zone; by end-2015, it had completed the dredging of the navigation channel and the construction of the port terminal on the Paraguay–Paraná waterway, consolidating its full farm-to-ship chain.

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Who owns it

The BBV’s own company ficha names two corporate shareholders: Lafonte Inversiones Industriales S.A. and Inversiones Medina S.R.L. Exact ownership percentages and the individuals behind those holding companies are not disclosed in available public sources; what is clear from exchange filings is that extraordinary shareholder meetings have been called and resolved “with 100% of the company’s capital present,” indicating a tightly-held, small-circle ownership structure.

The company’s founders and senior managers previously spent more than ten years running Gravetal Bolivia, which at its peak ranked among Bolivia’s ten largest companies with annual sales above USD 170 million — a pedigree that gave Nutrioil credibility with bondholders and banks from its earliest days.

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Who runs it

The principal executives and board members each spent more than a decade at one of Bolivia’s most important soybean companies before forming Nutrioil, bringing deep knowledge across finance, operations and commercial management. Individual CEO and CFO names are not disclosed in currently available public filings on the BBV or ASFI.

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The money, in plain words

Nutrioil does not publish stand-alone audited financials in an accessible public format; the most recent figures available come from a June 2024 sector study by rating agency PCR, which groups Nutrioil with Bolivia’s four other large oilseed processors. For the five companies combined at December 2023, total assets were Bs 12.2 billion (~USD 1.24 billion), total revenue over 12 months was Bs 11.2 billion (~USD 1.14 billion), and combined net profit was Bs 186.9 million (~USD 19 million) — a thin net margin of about 1.7% (our calculation), reflecting a difficult year.

The sector as a whole saw weakened profit coverage and solvency ratios through 2023, because international commodity prices fell sharply — soybean oil prices dropped more than the grain itself — compressing margins across the board. Nutrioil’s own policy reinforces this picture: ordinary shareholders receive no cash dividend; all profit is ploughed back into the business as retained capital.

As a bond issuer, Nutrioil carries approximately USD 16 million in bond debt, raised through two public bond programmes (Bonos Nutrioil I and II) on the BBV. Its local bond credit rating is B1– on the Bolivia scale, indicating high certainty of timely payment backed by strong liquidity and sound underlying protection factors.

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What it is doing now

The most recent regulatory disclosure on the ASFI platform records that on 31 January 2024, Banco Unión S.A. disbursed a credit line of Bs 70,000,000 (~USD 7.1 million) to Nutrioil — a significant short-term funding move suggesting active management of working capital amid tight soybean availability. Puerto Jennefer continues to accept external cargo of all types — bulk, liquid, containers and project freight — and offers port services to third parties, positioning the company as a logistics hub beyond its own soybean processing volumes.

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What to watch

• Raw material supply. Bolivia’s oilseed industry can process nearly 5 million tonnes a year but domestic soybean production runs at roughly 3 million — meaning plants like Nutrioil routinely operate well below capacity. Any drought or policy change affecting farm yields hits Nutrioil’s revenue line directly.
• Commodity prices. Soybean and derivative exports peaked in 2021–22; 2023 brought contraction driven by falling international prices. A price recovery would sharply lift margins; a further slide would stress bond-service coverage.
• Port revenues as a buffer. Nutrioil’s categorisation as an International Port of Mixed Use allows it to handle import and export cargo of all types, giving the port a revenue stream independent of its own crushing volumes — worth tracking as a shock absorber.
• Disclosure. Nutrioil is a bond issuer, not an equity issuer with mandatory quarterly reporting. Financial transparency is thin; any improvement in public disclosure — or a new bond prospectus with updated audited accounts — would be the clearest signal of financial health.

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This is news, not investment advice.