denotes premium content | Jan 6 2009 
Feature
posted 23 Feb 2005 in Volume 8 Issue 4
Fedecafé, Colombia: Cool coffee club deal
MLAs: ABN Amro, Natexis Banques Populaires
Borrower: Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia
Deal size: $40m
Tenor and payment schedule: three years; monthly repayments
Tranches: $34m disbursed as a commodity-backed three-year trade facility. A $6m commercial loan, disbursed in local currency and backed by the fund’s tax receivables, was also arranged
Closing: 27 January 2004
Disbursement: 30 January 2004
Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (Fedecafé), the national federation of Colombian coffee producers, markets and sells approximately 30% of the nation’s coffee exports. It also manages the Fondo Nacional del Café, created by the Colombian government in 1940 to promote, co-ordinate and support coffee producers in coffee sales and exports. In January 2004, Fedecafé was awarded a $40m term-loan mandate to refinance its export securitisation allowing for additional products to be incorporated into its business, such as futures brokerage and clearing services, which is expected to improve the management of its financial supply chain.
$34m was disbursed as a commodity-backed (coffee) three-year trade facility in a club deal with Natexis Banques Populaires and ABN Amro. A $6m commercial loan (disbursed in local currency and backed by the fund’s tax receivables) was also arranged. The structure of the trade facility comprises the opening of a concentration account with ABN Amro in New York through which Fedecafé will handle approximately $150m of its international sales flows from ten of its main buyers located in Europe.
”We decided to propose a commodity-oriented financing (secured by a pledge of coffee inventories and an assignment of future export receivables), which is not a very common structure for Colombia coffee exporters,” says Jean Tournaire, vice-president, soft commodities, Latin America at Natexis, which enjoys a long-standing relationship with Fedecafé. “In spite of fierce competition, the mandate was awarded to us. The financing is performing quite well,” he adds.
ABN Amro brought together the key components of corporate treasury best practice – liquidity management, FX, trade services and cash flow – in its working-capital business to provide an integrated advisory approach. According to Daniel Cotti, managing director, global trade advisory at ABN Amro, “This agreement is further evidence that organisations around the world recognise the importance of an integrated approach to managing their financial supply chain.”
Catalina Crane, CFO of Fedecafé, comments: “It was very important that ABN Amro was not only able to offer the broad range of services that we would expect, but also that they have the ability to provide these in a truly integrated manner. They understand the combination of financing options that best fits our business requirements.”
