Venezuela's default in 2017 and the lack of payment severely affected the dairy cooperative
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The critical situation that the dairy cooperative SanCor is going through has multiple facets, but one of the most relevant and long-standing factors is the million-dollar debt with Venezuela, derived from the bilateral agreements signed starting in 2006 between former communist dictator Hugo Chávez and former president Néstor Kirchner.
That political-commercial relationship resulted in an enormous debt that, almost two decades later, remains unsolved and has become a structural burden for the company.
Within the framework of those agreements, SanCor took part in the Bilateral Trust Fund between Argentina and Venezuela, a financial mechanism designed with the objective of facilitating the exchange of Venezuelan fuel for Argentine products.
Through that scheme, the cooperative placed dairy products in the Venezuelan market. In addition, it made extra sales to companies controlled by Chavismo, expanding its commercial exposure.
SanCor.
The situation became critical when Venezuela went into default in 2017 and stopped honoring its payment commitments. Originally, the debt with SanCor exceeded 30 million dollars. Over time, a part of that amount was paid off, but there are still around USD 18 million pending collection, a significant figure for a company that is going through a deep financial crisis.
Since then, SanCor has made multiple efforts before different Argentine governments with the objective of recovering those funds and achieving some type of official intervention that would make it possible to unblock the claim. However, none of those attempts had positive results. The lack of diplomatic and commercial progress gradually diluted over the years the chances of collection.
In the current context, the situation is becoming even more complex. With the capture of dictator narcoterrorist Nicolás Maduro by the United States, the chances that the cooperative may recover that debt are being drastically reduced, leaving practically no horizon for a solution to that specific liability.
Néstor Kirchner y Hugo Chávez.
SanCor's history
Founded in 1938 as a cooperative of dairy producers, it was for decades the leading company in the sector in Argentina. According to data from the Argentine Dairy Chain Observatory (OCLA), in 1994 it processed 4.6 million liters per day, leading the national industry.
However, over the years it began to lose market share: in 2009 it processed 3 million liters per day and had fallen to second place in the ranking, and by 2022 it had dropped to 12th place, with just over 533,000 liters per day.
At present, the cooperative processes around 700,000 liters per day, adding its own production and that of third parties. It operates six industrial plants, three located in Santa Fe and three in Córdoba, with varying levels of activity in each one.
The crisis deepened between 2023 and 2024 due to prolonged union conflicts with Atilra, which resulted in plant blockades and salary delays. That scenario ultimately pushed SanCor into a preventive creditors' arrangement, filed in February 2025.
