Belgian plantation group Socfin sees profits explode

Medium_sofin_action
Action in front of Socfin's Swiss subsidiary on 20.10.2021 (Photo: Bread for All)
De Tijd | 04 May 2022

(This is a free Deepl translation from the original)

Belgian plantation group Socfin sees profits explode

Bert Broens

Last year, the Belgian Hubert Fabri's plantation group Socfin saw its turnover rise sharply to more than 800 million euro. The profit even climbed to 80 million.

Socfin, fully called Société Financière de Caoutchoucs, is formally a Luxembourg company with a stock exchange listing in the Grand Duchy. But Socfin is 54.2 percent owned by the Belgian businessman Hubert Fabri. Almost 39 per cent of the capital is held by French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, while the rest is listed on the stock exchange.

The group is no small player: it operates 192,000 hectares of plantations of tropical palm oil and rubber trees in Africa and Southeast Asia. It also has some other small farming operations and Socfin is mainly active as a trader. The company employs almost 35,000 people.

Price increase

Socfin saw its turnover increase by over a third last year to EUR 837.6 million. This is mainly due to the increase in the price of extracted products, in particular the peak in palm oil prices. In addition, Socfin simply sold more. Exchange rates had a negative impact on turnover, but this was more than offset by the positive factors.

The group also benefited from higher financial income and lower financial charges. Taxes increased, but the bottom line was a net group profit of EUR 80.4 million. That is considerably more than the 4.7 million euros of 2020. There is therefore room to pay out a dividend again.

Socfin has repeatedly, including recently, been the subject of negative publicity because of the poor conditions on the plantations and their lack of sustainability. Fabri and Socfin have already been prosecuted several times in our country for other reasons. According to its latest annual report, the group still has several million euro disputes with the Belgian tax authorities.
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