Suspension of CISA Exportadora operations causes anxiety and uncertainty
Producers do not know how they will finance the harvest, and they fear that companies will begin to pay them less for their export coffee.
By Ivan Olivares (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – The company CISA Exportadora suddenly suspended its operations in Nicaragua, sources from the Nicaraguan coffee sector confirmed to CONFIDENCIAL. The suspension of processing at the ‘El Carmen’ coffee processing plant in the Pacific and the ‘San Carlos’ in the northern part of the country, has coffee growers worried since they are the leading exporter of coffee in the country, as well as a source technical and financial support.
CISA Exportadora is owned by the company RCG Capital Management, which several months ago bought the operations and investments Mercon Coffee Group led by businessman Jose Antonio Baltodano. Now this international company decided to withdraw its operations from Nicaragua.
Since last weekend, producers who usually work with the company were informed not to take their coffee to the collection centers, because they would be closed and would not receive the product. Many of these coffee growers obtained loans to finance their harvest activities. Others were simply selling their harvest to the company.
“We only know that they closed purchases since the weekend, and that they do not answer our calls,” so “there is panic among coffee growers,” admitted a Jinotega producer.
Another producer only managed to explain that “I sell coffee to them. On Friday they told me that they would be auditing Saturday and Sund
