By PAULO SILVESTRE paulo.silvestre@theresidentgroup.com
A financial plan involving suppliers and employees has been devised to try and create a new company to rescue the Alicoop group, which has been insolvent since August 2009.
More than 150 small and medium sized businesses and suppliers of the Alicoop Food Products supermarket chain, based in Silves, are preparing to convert company debts, estimated to be around 17 million euros, into capital.
A meeting of the creditors was held on June 18 at the BCP bank in Lisbon with the BPN bank, Caixa Geral de Depósitos bank (CGD) and Caixa Agrícola bank, to discuss the plan.
And now an assembly with all the creditors, scheduled by the Silves Court on June 30 at Fissul Fairs and Exhibitions Pavilion in Silves, will decide, once and for all, the future of Alicoop, which was forced to temporarily close its 87 supermarkets (75 in the Algarve and 12 in Lisbon area), leaving 500 unemployed workers.
José Parreiro of the Alicoop workers committee said: “Under the new rescue plan, in future the group will not depend on banks as we are looking at other options for loans. We need the support of the creditors and support of everyone, including the workers.” The suppliers that are willing to transform at least part of Alicoop debts into capital to form a new society are mostly small regional and national businesses traders in vegetable, fruit, meat and bread markets.
Forming part of the process to rescue the Alicoop are the workers, 60 per cent of whom took out BPN bank loans two years ago for a total of 1.5 million euros, to become shareholders of the company.
Now unemployed and receiving around 70 per cent of what they used to earn when working for Alicoop, many are struggling to repay the loans.
“For us workers, the solution is to rescue the company and we strive to resolve this problem,” said José Parreira
