Madrid/The group Vima Foods It increased its benefits last year thanks to its buoyant business in Cuba. Specifically, and as reported on Tuesday Digital economythe conglomerate shopping center, which operates from La Coruña (Spain) with the name of Vima Food Corporationits benefits increased by 16%, from 8.6 million euros by 2023 to 10 million in 2024, as well as its business figure, from 88 million euros to 105.8.
Of these almost 106 million, 49 correspond to their operations with the island, its main market, which however goes through the worst food crisis of its history.
In importance for the conglomerate, founded by Víctor Moro Suárez – son of Víctor Moro Rodríguez, who died in 2021, politician of the Spanish transition and also at the head of a conglomerate of frozen packaging -, followed by the Dominican Republic (33 million) and Mexico (15.4 million), details Digital economywith a source in the last Vima food corporation accounts referred to the Spanish Commercial Registry. The data, the local medium indicates, “show the weight of the discreet food empire of the Moorish family.”
In the note, Spain is not appointed – although other countries where Vima Foods presumes to be implanted, such as China, Panama and the United States – and rightly refer to Coruña society as “a firm as little known as profitable.” Vima products, as omnipresent in Cuban stores as denoted by their buyers – and ranging from frozen vegetables to precooked foods, through canned vegetables, jams or grains – are not found in Spanish supermarkets.
As an explanation to their growth, the company’s administrators put in their most recent report that was due to the increase in activity of the whole group
As an explanation to their economic growth, the company’s administrators put in their most recent management report that was due to the increase in activity of the entire group in general: “Throughout the 2024 exercise, society has experienced growth in its turnover as a result of the strategy of the strategy of rebranding of product initiated in previous exercises and the consolidation of the presence of the group in the channels retail and Food Serviceswhich has meant an increase in the demand of the Vima Group companies to their shopping center. ”
A prominent element in the report is the “new subsidiary” created by the group on the island this year, Vima Caribe, “which channels all commercial operations towards a new branch, a 100% foreign capital society, in charge of the importation, storage, commercialization and distribution of the group’s products in Cuba.”
This is how it is clear that this “collaboration project” Between Vima and the Gaesa military conglomerate (Business Administration Group SA) Through its Cimex Corporation, signed last January, it goes beyond the management of several “dollarized” stores. He has involved the legal creation of a new company, of which the official Cuban press has not given news.
“This new branch,” he continues Digital economy“It will replace the previous one, and it is expected that due to its importing condition it will provide greater commercial capacity.”
The medium also clarifies the last fluctuations of the Vima Foods subsidiaries, which they do not in vain refer as “a very disseminated conglomerate”
The medium also clarifies the last fluctuations of the Vima Foods subsidiaries, which they do not in vain refer as “a very disseminated conglomerate.” In this way, the Vima Food Corporation “has transferred its corporate employees in Spain to a new society, CS Vima, domiciled in Madrid, which will be responsible for concentrating all management services, support for management and human resources that are provided to all companies in the group”.
It is in the Spanish capital where the head of the conglomerate, Vima World, is domiciled, which until March 2023 was located in Panama. Then, the sources of the specialized environment continue, “its process of transferring registered office to Spain and its transformation into a limited society, maintaining its legal personality.”
Group’s business prospects, appointment Digital economywill continue to grow, betting on “its consolidation in the segment of food distribution in Central America” and “opening markets in countries where it had no presence.”
Vima insists on describing himself on his website as a “family tradition company founded in 1994” and as a group “linked in its origins to the fishing sector of Galicia, Spain”, despite being very little known in that land.
At the same time, the Moor have never hidden their link with the island, and in fact, the son of Moro Suárez, Víctor Moro Morros-Sardamarried in style in Havana in December 2023. The patriarch, meanwhile, has lived more than 25 years in Cuba, where he was president of the Association of Spanish Entrepreneurs in the country.
The Moor have never hidden their link with the island, and in fact, the son of Moro Suárez, Víctor Moro Morros-Sarda, married in style in Havana
More opaque is the origin and growth of your millionaire business. The Panama papers, publication of the Mossack Fonseca database by the International Consortium of Research Journalists (ICIJ), revealed in 2016 that Vima World was among the companies registered in tax havens.
In the ICIJ search engine, it appears as founded in January 1994 in the British Virgin Islands. However, Moro Suárez himself admitted in an interview with the Galician local press, in 2006, that his emporium began in Cuba. Before the journalist’s question about how he “learned” to have “one hundred and sixty employees that make twenty million meals worldwide,” the businessman replied: “I found a work niche in the Caribbean area, starting from Cuba, and that circumstance led me to organize this group of companies.”
A note published in The voice of Galicia Four years before he corroborated: “Vima was born in Havana in 1994, to take advantage of the opening of the Cuban market to tourist investment and become the main distributor to hotels and restaurants.” In that 2002, the information indicated that Vima World, “a Vigo headquarters and 100% participated by the Galician family Moro,” was the leader of the sector in Cuba, controlling 15% of the food distribution and 25% of the supply to hotels. In 2001, their income had been, as detailed, 25 million euros. In a quarter of a century, the business has multiplied by four, rubbing 106 million last year.
How a company could be founded in Cuba, in charge of a foreigner, in the mid -1990s, and reaching those figures in just seven years, is one of the unknowns that Vima poses, which began to appear in establishments of the island just at that time, that of dollarization and despair of the special period. The answer can be in that 2006 interview, in which the journalist wrote that, as they had told him, Moro Suárez met with personalities of the regime, such as Fidel Castro himself.
