04|01|2010

Portuguese group BA Vidro becomes leading shareholder of La Seda de Barcelona

Portuguese group BA Vidro has become the leading shareholder of La Seda de Barcelona .
The company has underwritten an expansion worth 65 million euros, which will provide it with a shareholding of around 18%. BA Vidro has already drawn up its own strategic plan to refloat the company.

BA Vidro president, Carlos Moreira, on becoming a shareholder on the 19th of June, forecast that La Seda “would not be profitable for another three years”, and has set a deadline of one year to ensure the viability of the company. “We have an industrial Project that makes sense, but are aware of the fact it can only be profitable in the long term”.

According to Moreira, BA Vidro, specialized in the glass packaging market for the foodstuffs and soft drinks sector, has spent years studying the PET plastics market and has spotted an “opportunity to enter this market through La Seda”.

The management irregularities detected by audit.firms Horwath and KPMG involve costs of more than 200 million euros and have led the Anticorruption Prosecutor to open two investigations and La Seda to present a responsibility action against the ex-president, Rafael Español. “We the shareholders of BA Vidro have agreed to demand responsibilities be met by those who have committed crimes”, explains Moreira.