Nicaragua increases its ethanol exports to Europe, with 28 million dollars in sales so far this year.

 

Almost at the same time the 200 people affected by Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) marched down the 122 kilometers separating Chichigalpa from Managua, as covered by Giorgio Trucchi in an article last Wednesday, 16 million liters of ethanol produced in the Ingenio San Antonio (ISA) mill property of the Pellas Group, were being loaded at Puerto Corinto to be shipped to two companies in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.

With this shipment, the ethanol exported this year alone by ISA to European markets reached a total of 40 million liters. Álvaro Martínez, Sales and Logistics Director at ISA, informed that in 2007 the company exported 20 million liters, last year the volume of exports increased to 50 million, and this year it is expected to reach 80 million liters. He said that “the ethanol shipments are delivered to Rotterdam ports, and from there they are sent out to fuel companies in Europe.” He also informed that at 75 US cents per liter, the price paid for ethanol in European markets is currently one of the highest.

 

European buyers don’t seem to care much about the conditions under which workers plant and harvest the sugarcane used to produce the alcohol for car fuel. They can’t claim ignorance. In November 2008, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal sent a letter to the Italian ambassador to Nicaragua, with a copy to the President of Italy and the Foreign Minister, in which it essentially said:

“During the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Mesoamerican hearing on ‘Neoliberal policies, transnational corporations and economic groups’ (Guatemala, October 10-11, 2008) a number of detail complaints were presented reporting how Ingenio San Antonio, property of the company Nicaragua Sugar Estate Ltd., a member of the Pellas Group, used agrotoxic substances carelessly, spraying them massively in its sugarcane plantations, thus causing serious harm to the health of its workers, and severely affecting water resources and the environment in general.”

 

The Pellas Group is a huge conglomerate, formed by more than 50 companies and directed since the early 1980s by Carlos Pellas Chamorro. Its assets are valued at 4 billion dollars, and it employs around 15,000 workers. The most important companies in the Group include banking operators, such as BAC International Bank -a company that operates in every country of Central America, which also controls the Credomatic network-, and the south Florida-based BAC Florida Bank. Some of the other companies owned by the Pellas Group include Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited, owner of Ingenio San Antonio, which has an annual production capacity of 250,000 metric tons of sugar, 18 million liters of ethanol, 80,000 metric tons of molasses, and 60 MW of power, besides having several other projects, including shrimp production and power generation, with 5,500 blocks of eucalyptus planted; Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua SA, which produces the Flor de Caña rum and other alcoholic beverages, as well as methane gas; and Casa Pellas, the representative of Toyota in Nicaragua.

 

The Group also holds a 40 percent interest in GBM, which represents IBM in Central America and the Caribbean; a 10 percent interest in Unión Fenosa, the Spanish transnational corporation that controls electric power distribution in Nicaragua; and another 40 percent interest in ESTESA, Nicaragua’s leading cable television provider. Also owned by the Pellas Group are Seguros América, an insurance company, and Aduanera y Almacenadora Pellas S.A (ALPESA), which offers customs brokerage, goods warehousing, domestic transportation, and integral global logistics services. In addition, the Group owns 7,000 hectares of orange groves along the San Juan River in southern Nicaragua, with 1.4 million orange trees planted, and it exports orange juice to the United States for the Coca-Cola-owned Minute Maid.

 

This is the giant that our affiliate, the Nicaraguan Association of People Affected by Chronic Renal Failure (ANAIRC), is up against, claiming damages for the more than 3,209 dead and over 4,000 affected over the past few years by the indiscriminate use of agrotoxic substances in the sugarcane plantations of the Pellas Group. But according to the legend, in the end David defeats Goliath.