Arcor Group’s History

Arcor was born as the materialization of the dream of a group of young entrepreneurs led by Fulvio Salvador Pagani. The dream was to offer consumers around the world quality products at a fair price. This dream started to become true on July 5, 1951 with the opening of a candy factory in Arroyito, a small town in inner Argentina located in the province of Córdoba.

With great effort and dedication the dream started to grow. Arcor thus became an industrial group by involving itself in different activities that would allow it to be its own provider of strategic supplies, so as to achieve the goal of best quality at best price.

With a sustained growth, Arcor started to develop new product markets with the purpose of broadening and diversifying its range of products offered. To that end, it integrated the chocolate, cookies & crackers and food business to its production.

Furthermore, it designed a retail distribution model that evolved and grew with the Company. This system, nowadays considered a world-class system, allowed the Group the widest national reach, and it is currently being replicated by other countries in the region.

By the end of this stage, Arcor started its transition into an economic group with an international projection.

The Company initiated its export activities with the idea of exploring new geographical destinations outside its country of origin.

Ever since its creation, Arcor was conceived with the dream of taking its products to consumers of different markets around the globe. This early international projection allowed Arcor Group to appreciate the value of a Latin American integration and the potential development of a common market.

That is how, under a very strong export policy, the Company placed itself at an avant-garde position, and it continued its internationalization process by establishing commercial offices in Paraguay (1976) and Uruguay (1979). One year later, in 1980, Arcor initiated the expansion of its production by acquiring Nechar S.A., a small candy factory located in Rio das Pedras, in San Pablo, Brazil. That same decade, in 1989, it initiated its productive activities in Chile by acquiring Alimentos Indal S.A.

At the same time, Arcor begins to create its first brands with the purpose to differentiate itself even more. That is how the Bon o Bon brand is born, an international development paradigm. Arcor thus reinforces its strategic decision to place itself as a food company specialized in confectionery, with an international projection.

Arcor Group continued evolving towards the dream that gave rise to the Company; it continued consolidating its multinational character by setting up commercial offices in different countries in America: The United Stated (1993), Peru (1996), Colombia (1998), Ecuador (1998) and Mexico (2000).

Furthermore, by means of a continuous reinvestment policy, the Company increased the number of its productive units by acquiring and constructing different industrial plants in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru.

Since 1993, Luis A. Pagani, Fulvio's eldest son, has taken over the Company's management, with great leadership vocation.

Under this new administration, Arcor greatly evolves in the different areas of the Company, thus reinforcing the quality, innovation, professionalism, integration, commitment, ethics and competitiveness that have distinguished it since its inception.

In order to reaffirm its strategic decision to place itself amongst the main companies at the international level, Arcor kept strengthening the development of its retail distribution model and, at the same time, it leveraged its export program.

In this fifth stage, in line with its international expansion policy, Arcor set up commercial offices in Spain (2002), Bolivia (2004) and China (2007).
It also continued its productive internationalization with the opening of new industrial plants in several parts of the world, currently reaching more than 40 industrial plants in Latin America and more than 100 countries with its products.

In this sense, as part of its growth strategy, Arcor developed significant alliances and acquisitions that allowed the company to continue evolving.

By the end of 2005, Arcor acquired Benvenuto S.A.C.I. a traditional leading company of food products in the Argentine market, with its leading brands such as La Campagnola, Nereida, BC, Salsati, among others.

A major milestone at this stage is the association between Arcor Group and the French Danone Group (2005), whereby they unified their cookies and crackers, alfajores and cereal bars businesses in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, thus giving birth to the greatest cookies company in South America called Bagley Latinoamérica S.A.

In 2007, in association with Bimbo Group, Mundo Dulce was created with the opening of a plant in Toluca (Mexico) in order to produce confectionery and chocolates for the Mexican and export market.

In 2010, Arcor established a strategic alliance with Coca-Cola for cobranding and joint development of new products with novel combinations. In turn, this alliance resulted in the creation of Kamay Ventures in 2019, the first Argentine capital fund open to new opportunities and talents.

Subsequently, in 2015, Arcor celebrated a historic agreement with Bagley, acquiring 43% of the shares of Mastellone Hermanos, the leading Argentine company with over 85 years of history in manufacturing and selling dairy products. In 2017 Arcor Group acquires 100% of Zucamor, a company specialized in producing paper and cardboard, with seven industrial plants in Argentina. Because of this new structure, Arcor Group’s Packaging division stands out as one of the major Packaging solutions companies in the Southern Cone.

Likewise, the recent alliance with Laboratorios Bagó (2018), enabled the merging of both companies to develop Simple, a line of dietary supplements.

In June, 2018, following Arcor Group’s international outlook, an agreement was celebrated with Webcor Group, one of the largest food distribution companies in Angola, to set up an industrial candy and biscuit plant in that country.

With all these new acquisitions and strategic alliances, Arcor strengthens as a group with 3 business divisions: Food for mass consumption, Agribusiness and Packaging.