Lactalis, the French dairy giant that landed in the country in 2015, sold its last Argentine plant to a local operator for an undisclosed sum. “This Argentine site was part of a larger acquisition made in Mexico,” a company spokesperson emphasized.
The divestment comes after Lactalis, in December 2022, acquired Dairy Partners America, a Fonterra and Nestlé joint venture, for which it paid around $136 million.
The company owned the La Mucca cheese factory, in the town of Díaz in Santa Fe, where he employed 85 people. But the business margins contracted, and Lactalis first got rid of that plant and now the offices he had in Buenos Aires.
The company owned the La Mucca cheese factory in Santa Fe.
In 2021, according to Rabobank’s annual Global Dairy Top 20, Lactalis overtook Nestlé as the world’s largest dairy producer and is the second largest food producer in France, after Danone.
The marker firm Edding leaves Argentina
The German marker firm Edding sold its Argentine subsidiary and it is another of the companies that is leaving the country. The new acquirer and who will be in charge of marketing the brand is Facundo Mendizábal, owner of the Parallel company known for being the importer of Stanley thermoses, and marketer of other multinational brands, such as Avent (Philips) or Impulse (Unilever ).
The company, as happened with other brands, such as Nike, is readjusting its global strategy, and they repeat the movement: they move away from the risk of the region, they leave the management of their products in the hands of third partiesusually local firms.
“With the implementation of the 2025+ Strategy, the edding Group no longer has a dedicated strategy for the Latin American region in early 2021,” the company explained.
And he went further pointing out in the country: “Since then, the risks of our activities in Argentina were no longer in balance with the expected benefits and now they can be significantly reduced through this sale. The business will continue with Parallel as distributor and partner in the Argentine market,” they said in a statement.
The operation, which will take effect from March 31, “A symbolic purchase price of US$1 was agreed upon.plus recoverable current assets (inventories and accounts receivable)”. While acquiring firm Parallel employs 44 people and in 2022 it had a turnover of US$26 million.
The company added that, “despite the only token purchase price and severance payments, the sale has a positive effect on net worththe financial situation and the operating results of the Group in comparison with the scenario of uncertainty that the company had been experiencing”.
Edding joins the airlines, clothing brands and other companies that cannot bear constant financial risk.
“The loss avoided by 2023 when compared to what would have happened with the business going live is currently estimated to be in the six-digit range of euros” (between 100 and 500 thousand), Edding estimated.
The departure of Argentina occurs after that of Brazil, country he left at the end of last year. There, since 2014, he had a 21% stake in the Brazilian firm Companhia de Canetas Compactor, which he sold to his partners, with a profit of 400,000 euros.
Edding was founded in Hamburg in 1960 and in 2022 had sales revenue of 159.2 million euros, with 735 employees. In addition to markers, it sells whiteboards and electronic displays and tattoo ink, among other things.
More than 20 companies left the country between 2019 and 2022
Due to the low economic activity during the Covid 19 pandemic and lThe economic problems that deepened after that period, more than 20 firms decided to abandon their operations in Argentina.
The long list began with Walmart and Falabella in 2020, and then airlines such as Latam and Qatar Airways joined; Glovo, Nike, Under Armour, Norwegian, among many others that failed to overcome the adversities caused by inflation and Argentine macroeconomic uncertainty.
