Brazil: Investors have started legal action over in Cimento Tupi’s defaulted debts and attempts to merge with its parent company Cimento Santo Estevão. The cement producer defaulted in mid-2018 on payments to foreign investors that hold around US$30m in it, according to the Valor Econômico newspaper. It also stopped paying interest on the debts in 2015.
Other creditors are also working to stop Cimento Tupi’s plans to merge with Cimento Santo Estevão because it would raise the company’s debts rather than cut costs. A court in Rio de Janerio rejected one case although others are on-going elsewhere. Separately, the Agricultural Bank of China is also challenging the cement producer over arrears in a loan worth US$18m.
Cimento Tupi operates one integrated plant at Pedra do Sino in Minas Gerais and a grinding plant in Modi das Cruzes in São Paulo. It has a combined cement production capacity of 2.5Mt/yr but it has been producing half of this since around 2015. Its operating revenue remained stable at US$43m for the first nine months of 2018. However, its loss more than trippled year-on-year to US$76m.
