Alquimia S.A. is a Paraguayan agribusiness that works with smallholder farmers to bring organic and conventional agricultural products to international markets. Alquimia exports chia, sesame, amaranth, beans, quinoa, and other products. By purchasing these products from farmers across Paraguay, Alquimia helps them benefit from high-value international markets. The company also experiments with new crops in its own fields. Alquimia manages a supply chain of 346 smallholder farmers bolstering their yields and incomes with the support from agricultural experts and helping them to obtain organic certification.
In 2014, GBF provided Alquimia with a long term working capital loan to enable the company to extend pre-campaign advances to farmers to secure seeds purchases.
GBF has also helped Alquimia with cash flow management and financial planning.
GBF BAS & Alquimia:
GBF BAS &
GBF has supported Alquimia with several BAS projects:
Financial Management: Improving cash flow management and financial planning through direct BAS support by the GBF investment staff. In addition, GBF provided support for an accounts revision exercise and the audit of management and operational processes.
Environmental & Social (E&S): improving seeds varieties (non-GMO) with the help of a geneticist, to improve productivity and generate additional income to farmers and savings to Alquimia.
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From January 2018 to December 2018, Alquimia engaged over 300 smallholder farmers in its supply chain (who in turn helped to generate income for more than 1,300 farm-workers), as well as directly employed 90 workers at their production plant.
In the last year, the company generated an estimated $2M of income to its smallholder suppliers and farm and field workers.
Many of Alquimia’s farmers lack property titles and therefore struggle to obtain credit from local financial institutions, advances from Alquimia offer some of these farmers their only financing option
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