Bus manufacturer Agrale stops production due to being unable to pay for imports of auto parts

The manufacturer of buses, trucks and tractors agral has decided to completely cripple its production starting next month because it does not have the dollars to pay for imports of auto parts. The Brazilian-born company has its factory in the city of Mercedes, in Buenos Aires, where 100 workers work, and they are already in talks with the Mechanical Union (SMATA) to agree on the impact that the production brake will have on employees .

The news was communicated by the company to its suppliers a week ago, but in these seven days the company has strengthened its efforts both with the Central Bank and with the Minister of Productive Development, Daniele Scioliand also with the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo “Wado” De Pedrowhose adoptive brother is the current mayor of Mercedes.

“We have taken all kinds of steps since the Central Bank issued Notice” A “7532, at the end of June,” the engineer told Clarín. Ignacio Armendariz, commercial director of Agrale Argentina. “We have also contacted each other Martin Redrado to see if he could contact someone at the Central Bank, with whom we are in talks Ricardo Pignanellihead of Smata, ”he added.

– Did you get any answers?

– So far we haven’t. To give you an idea, during the first week after the Central Bank resolution banning access to dollars, we sent 35 dollar purchase orders to pay for auto parts that had already been approved for import. Of the 35 requests, only 2 were approved.

-Have they paralyzed production?

-Not yet, because when this restriction came out we were very late with the orders. So now we will produce during July and part of August to recover. But we do not take new orders or billingin principle until the end of the year or until the picture is clarified.

Agrale is a Brazilian company, owned by the family Stedile, based in Caxias do Sul, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. It has had a commercial presence in Argentina since the 1990s, but since December 2007 it has operated as an automotive terminal on the premises of the former IES, in Mercedes.

It is a small terminal compared to the large multinationals that make up ADEFA, but trucks, tractors and above all small and medium-sized buses depart from its factory: It is the second largest bus chassis manufacturer in the country.together with Mercedes-Benz.

Last week the company sent a note to its suppliers informing them that following the Central Bank’s decision to extend the restriction on the sale of dollars to automotive terminals, “Agrale Argentina SA’s ability to make payments overseas was heavily impacted. ., also to make payments corresponding to imports that have already arrived at our production plant and with payment deadlines“.

In the note they specified that they had “come into contact” with various public and private entities, and also through Banco Santander, which is the operator through which they process the purchase of dollars to pay for imports with the Central Bank.

“In this context and in the absence of official responses, we are unable to plan the next few months correctly. This uncertainty, added to the lack of components that we were undergoing and that this measure has only accentuated, forced us to bring our programming to 0 (zero) until the end of the year until we received greater clarity on how to act, so is that we can really project, in this new context ”, adds the note, which does not exclude the resumption of production. “Our intention is to resume production as soon as possible and we will largely depend on the timing of the authorities and therefore on our supply network to get the supply chain back up and running”, adds the note.

-From what the note says, it’s not that there are no sales or no pesos, right?

–The pesos remained, and the business was doing very well, we were catching up after the falls of 2020 and 2021. But we are an assembler, with 50% of components imported. Engines and transmissions come from Brazil and the United States. Without these components, we cannot continue producing.