Mexican firm acquires Monteverde dairy company

The Monteverde dairy company was taken over by Mexican firm Sigma Alimentos, the weekly El Financiero reported.

Sigma acquired 100 percent of the shares of Monteverde, which produces milk and other dairy products and is “Costa Rica’s leader in the segment of mature cheeses,” the company said in a press release.

The firm entered in Costa Rica in 2002 after buying a charcuterie factory and currently has operations in Mexico, United States, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Dominican Republic and Perú.

Although the amount paid by the company was not disclosed, Sigma said that the former partners of Monteverde will become only milk suppliers of Sigma Alimentos Costa Rica, the new owner.

The decision to sell the company was adopted Monday at a meeting of shareholders, after a proposal to sell was presented last December.

Mexico is the third largest international investor in Costa Rica. A total of 33 Mexican companies employ 18,856 Costa Ricans who receive annual salaries of $240 million, a report from the Mexican Embassy stated last February.

Monteverde has its factory and processing plants in the town of the same name located at the Pacific province of Puntarenas.

It started in 1951 when 12 Quaker families from Alabama arrived in that community with the goal of making their home in Costa Rica.

In 1953, they founded the company Productores de Monteverde, and a year later, after building the physical plant, the production of cheese began. Monteverde Gouda was the first pasteurized cheese in the country.