Almudena Alvarez | Palencia (EFE).- The Cerealto factory -formerly Siro- Venta de Baños 1, where 197 people work and only make biscuits, is back in the fight after the closure announcement of the new owners who hide behind the Lack of investors interested in this activity to begin the process of closing the most emblematic plant in Venta de Baños (Palencia).
Up to this point, the multinational Cerealto, -formerly Grupo Siro, later Cerealto Siro Foods, and now only Cerealto- which has 9 factories in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Mexico and the United Kingdom, a turnover of 400 million euros, With 3,000 workers and the Afendis and Davidson Kempner groups as majority shareholders, it has been a story of successes and failures with great weight in Castilla y León.
This story begins in 1991, when the young businessman Juan Manuel González Serna bought Galletas Siro from Danone for three million pesetas when the Venta de Baños factory had a hundred employees.
1998.- THE TAKE-OFF AND EXPANSION OF SIRO
In 1998 Grupo Siro became a integrated supplier of Mercadona as a manufacturer of the Hacendado brand and with this alliance a stage of expansion and growth began, adding factories and expanding the product catalogue.
In fact, in 2006 Siro entered the sliced bread and pastries business and in 2012 the breakfast cereal business, consolidating a business model that in 2015 had 20 work centers in Spain, most of them in Castilla y León. , and bills 602 million euros.
That year, Grupo Siro had 4,100 workers and sold 352,000 tons of cookies, sliced bread, pastries, pasta, pastries and cereals made in more than 70 production lines distributed among its factories in Castilla y León, Valencia, Andalusia and Catalonia.
2018.- MERGER WITH SIRO-CEREALTO
The presidents of SIRO and CEREALTO, Juan Manuel González Serna and Luis Ángel López shake hands and seal a new stage in the company’s history. With this firm they decide to get rid of the bread and pastry businesses and begin the sale of the factories in Briviesca (Burgos), El Espinar (Segovia), Navarrés (Valencia), Medina del Campo (Valladolid), Antequera (Málaga) and Paterna (Valencia).
2020.- THE SITUATION IS COMPLICATED
The company’s situation at the end of 2020 is delicate. The year ended with a 20 percent drop in its sales after disinvesting in its business lines dedicated to bread and pastries. The multinational has more than 4,500 workers and a production of 374,000 tons per year distributed in 15 production centers, but debts accumulate and at the end of 2020 it signs a syndicated loan with several banks for a value of 311 million.
2021.- THE SEARCH FOR INVESTORS
In 2021, Cerealto Siro Foods raises the possibility of allowing investment funds or the Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI) to enter its capital, and it does so at the end of the year, it goes to SEPI and, while looking for investors, it proposes to the workers a plan “to improve competitiveness” to adjust to the new circumstances of the company.
2022.- THE CRISIS
During the first half of the year, negotiations with the workers that did not quite come to fruition take place, until on May 31, 2022, Cerealto Siro Foods announces the closure of the Galletas Siro plant in the Palencia town of Venta de Baños (Sale of Baños 1) with the commitment to transfer production and its 197 workers to the rest of the plants in Castilla y León.
With his decision to “transfer” the productive activity of Galletas Venta de Baños, the plant purchased in 1991, he wanted to “complete the entry operation of the investing partner and majority shareholder of Cerealto Siro Foods.”
The Works Council of the Venta de Baños factory received the news like a jug of cold water and considered the conditions that the multinational put on the table “unacceptable”.
At that point, the multinational had been negotiating for months with the works councils of its remaining work centers in Spain (Venta de Baños and Aguilar de Campo, in Palencia, Toro, in Zamora and El Espinar in Segovia) a plan to improve competitiveness as a step prior to the entry of the American fund Davidson Kempner and the Turkish fund Afendis into its shareholders, to inject capital into the company that accumulated a debt of close to 300 million euros.
The mistrust of the workers regarding this competitiveness plan, who voted unevenly in assemblies held in each center, and the announcement of the closure of the Venta de Baños 1 plant dynamited everything, to the point that the future of all the factories Castilla y León, where about 1,700 people work, was hanging by a thread.
JUNE 2022.- THE AGREEMENT
For two weeks the meetings and negotiations took place. The workers gathered in Venta de Baños to prevent the closure of the Venta de Baños factory and all the administrations and unions raised their voices against the cessation of Siro’s activity in Castilla y León.
The then Minister of Industry, Reyes Maroto, was personally involved in the solution to the conflict and it was at a meeting held at the Ministry on Thursday, June 10, which lasted until the wee hours of the morning, where the agreement was reached that guaranteed the viability of the group’s plants.
The agreement contemplated million-dollar investments and the maintenance of activity and employment in all the plants in Castilla y León, with the exception of Venta de Baños 1, which was given a period of two years to find a solution that would make it viable. .
At the end of June 2022, Cerealto Siro Food closed the transfer of ownership, made up of 9 factories in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Mexico and the United Kingdom, a turnover of 400 million euros and 3,000 workers, with investors Afendis and Davidson Kempner, who became majority shareholders of the company with 75% of the shareholding.
2023.- NEW CRISIS FOR THE SALE OF BATHROOMS 1
After the transfer of the company, a follow-up committee was set up to supervise the agreement and the search for investors for Venta de Baños 1. Almost a year later, the withdrawal of two interested investors at the end of May once again put the specter of closure on the the table with the argument that they have not found investors interested in taking over the productive unit and following “the road map” starting the closing process.
Once again the alarms went off and workers, administrations and unions began to move to stop the disaster, accusing the company of a lack of transparency and claiming that the deadline agreed in the competitiveness plan signed in June had not yet expired. of 2022 and that would expire in the same month of 2024.
All hopes are now pinned on the five-party meeting (Ministry of Industry, Junta de Castilla y León, Venta de Baños City Council, Company and workers) scheduled this Friday at the Ministry of Industry in which a way out for the biscuit after the Junta de Castilla y León has announced that there is a firm offer to acquire the factory. EFE