Consultora Agropecuaria Surco Nuevo, a grain elevator operator in Tandil, has 58 bounced checks totaling $2.2268 billion and bank obligations of $4.277 billion, of which $2.28 billion is classified as debtors with problems. The crisis is already affecting suppliers and producers in the region.
The financial crisis at Consultora Agropecuaria Surco Nuevo S.A., a firm with more than 15 years of activity in Tandil and southeastern Buenos Aires province, is beginning to set off alarm bells across the region's productive network. Records from the financial system of the Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA) show a deeply compromised picture: 58 bounced checks for more than $2.226 billion and obligations with banks that exceed $4.277 billion, a good part of them rated in credit risk categories.
The situation would already have consequences beyond the company's own accounts. Sources in the area told Bichos de Campo that Surco Nuevo's difficulties have begun to be felt in productive activity and that its failure to meet its commitments is affecting both suppliers and agricultural producers who maintained commercial relations with the firm.
According to BCRA records, Consultora Agropecuaria Surco Nuevo S.A. has accumulated 58 bounced checks for a total of $2,226,843,346.50. These are commitments that could not be honored and that constitute a particularly worrying sign about the company's liquidity.
The checks are only one part of the financial picture. The information on its obligations with financial institutions shows even larger debt, distributed across different credit rating categories. The most delicate segment corresponds to obligations classified in situation 3, a category the Central Bank defines as debtors with problems: there, commitments for $2.28 billion appear, with Banco Nación, Banco Provincia, Credicoop and Supervielle among the main creditors.
To that amount are added another $1.552 billion in situation 2, that is, under special monitoring, a segment in which private banks and Mutual Guarantee Societies (Sociedades de Garantía Recíproca, SGR) appear mainly. Finally, the firm records another $444,949,000 in situation 1, the system's normal category. The sum of bank obligations reaches $4.277 billion; although these are records different from the bounced checks and they should not automatically be considered independent liabilities, both indicators allow an observation of the scale of the company's financial difficulties.
Surco Nuevo is not an unknown company for Tandil producers. It began operations in 2010 offering inputs and services to farms in the area and, over the years, expanded its commercial structure until it became a firm with a presence in different activities linked to the agricultural business.
Its offering includes the supply of seeds, fertilizers and crop protection products, agronomic advice, crop monitoring, marketing and grain handling, as well as the sale of agricultural machinery and spare parts. In its institutional presentation, the company reports that it markets more than 40,000 tonnes of grains and oilseeds per campaign through its own storage facility and agreements with other storage installations, with direct logistics to the ports. In machinery, it declared delivering more than 30 units per year, and it also ventured into the financial business through alliances with banks and SGRs.
That diversity of activities explains why the difficulties of a company of these characteristics can far exceed its own structure. In the agricultural business, input dealerships and grain elevators often occupy an important place in the day-to-day financing of farms, in the supply of inputs for each campaign and in the marketing of harvests. When one of those players stops honoring its commitments, the problem can quickly spread to those who depend on its payments to keep working.
Surco Nuevo's situation once again puts under scrutiny the financial fragility of companies that occupy a relevant place in agriculture's commercial network. It is not the first episode of this kind in Buenos Aires province: in Chivilcoy, the Huergo Cereales grain elevator was at the center of a conflict that ended up involving more than 70 producers, who had delivered their grain and were unable to get paid. Last April, faced with the lack of responses from the firm's managers, the affected producers decided to pursue legal action; by then, Huergo Cereales had accumulated 481 bounced checks for nearly $3 billion.
