Metalfor, one of Argentina’s leading farm-machinery makers, said on Tuesday it has asked a court in Córdoba province to open bankruptcy protection proceedings, which pause creditors’ individual claims while a company reorganizes its debts.
The company, which makes self-propelled crop sprayers and has been owned since 2017 by the Bertotto Boglione group, said in a statement that the filing, a concurso preventivo made in the town of Marcos Juárez, aims to protect its continuity and to stop individual creditor actions from eroding its assets. It said it keeps producing, delivering machines, supplying spare parts and servicing customers, and that the filing “begins a new stage” rather than a shutdown.
The rating agency FIX SCR put Metalfor’s adjusted financial debt at 142.9 billion pesos (about US$92 million) in June and said, in an Aug. 27 report that withdrew its rating, that its cash covered only about 6% of commitments due within a year. The company had also arranged a US$50 million loan with the US government’s development finance agency, DFC, in late 2025.
Metalfor lost 26.5 billion pesos in the first half, against a profit a year earlier, according to its filing with the securities regulator, and creditors have won court-ordered seizures on its accounts.
In July the company asked the Córdoba labor ministry to open a crisis procedure over late wages, and a week later it dismissed 35 workers at its Noetinger plant. In August, a company proposal to cut about 70% of its workforce of roughly 600 became public.
The farm-machinery market is weak: registrations of self-propelled sprayers fell 21.7% in September from a year earlier to 47 units and are down 9.8% so far this year, according to dealer-association data.
At the industrial conference where Economy Minister Luis Caputo announced relief for small firms on Tuesday, Córdoba Governor Martín Llaryora named Metalfor and Pauny, another farm-machinery maker, as examples of well-run companies now in trouble, and said the national government needs a policy to support established industries as well as new ones.
