The 170 employees of the meat company Artigas Alimentaria will lose their jobs after commercial court number 2 of Girona has authorized the liquidation of the business, which has been in bankruptcy since last year.
According to sources familiar with the case, the court has rejected the offer for the production unit that Agotzaina, a meat company based in Navarra, had presented. "The proposal contemplated preserving 75 jobs and maintaining business activity, but the value that Agotzaina was willing to pay for Artigas' assets was too low. It stood at 320,000 euros," they comment. According to the Girona firm, the assets are worth around 14 million euros and according to the bankruptcy administration, around 10 million euros.
With this difference in valuations, the judge considers that the company's creditors - a total of 170, including banks and companies - will have a better chance of collecting if the business goes into liquidation and the assets are sold in batches. Among the most valued, stands out a 24,000m2 industrial plot in Cornellà de Terri, a slaughterhouse, machinery, trucks and office furniture.
The debt amounts to 20.4 million euros and with the sale of the assets it will be returned, in part, to different creditors. Based in Cornellà de Terri, Artigas Alimentaria thus ends its activity in the market after 67 years of existence. The cause of the definitive closure lies in a change in the upward cycle of the price of pork that the company's management did not know how to manage. In 2022, the company had a turnover of more than 100 million euros, although last year the figure registered a significant decrease.
