The livestock company Icpor Soria closed 2024 with a turnover of €122.74 million, slightly lower than the previous year’s €123.46 million, due to the decline in pork prices experienced by the market last year, although it produced more animals, 518,000 compared to 473,000 in 2023. This year, the company will focus its investments on acquiring some of the farms it has in integration due to the lack of generational replacement in the sector.
This is explained by the president of Icpor Soria, Pascual López, to Heraldo Diario de Soria, who points out that farmers are retiring and leaving the farms, so Icpor is forced to buy them to maintain the farms and continue producing their pigs, thus entering the full management of the sow farms.
In Soria, Icpor Soria has grown alongside Copiso and has expanded to the Teruel area. Currently, the company produces 400,000 white pigs between Soria, Teruel, and Cuenca, where it also has fattening farms, in addition to the 118,000 Iberian pigs in the Salamanca area. In fact, between 60% and 70% of these white pigs are located in the province of Soria, and the rest are distributed between Teruel and Castilla-La Mancha.
It has five white pig breeding farms, which house about 13,000 sows, and eight Iberian pig farms, with about 7,000 breeders. The cooperative Copiso does not produce Iberian pigs, as this production is carried out through the Icpor Soria company. The breeding farms are mainly in the province of Soria, with some in Valladolid and Segovia, and all are fed by the Valcorba feed factory. On the other hand, the Iberian fattening farms are located around Salamanca, where Iberian pig fattening is more traditional and the livestock infrastructures are better suited to this type of farming. In Salamanca, Icpor has its own infrastructure to develop this activity and has the support to manufacture feed from Copasa, a cooperative in Salamanca.
Over the years, growth has been continuous, except until now: “In 2023, the final turnover amounted to €123 million, and in 2024 it remained at €122.742 million due to the containment of pork prices,” says López. In previous years, prices were exorbitant due to the increase in meat production costs. However, production continues to rise, with 518,000 pigs in 2024 compared to 473,000 the previous year. Therefore, he believes that revenue growth will be linked to new projects that will be increasingly difficult to carry out.
Additionally, it has its own resources of €30 million. “We have not distributed dividends since it was founded; all the money has been used to refinance Icpor and to continue growing.”
With the new farm launched in Cuenca, Icpor Soria considers all its planned projects to be completed for the moment, and in the short term, it does not foresee new investments in Castilla y León due to the difficulties in carrying out projects, but it does in Castilla-La Mancha.
What it will have to do is acquire sow farms in integration. Currently, only 25% of the facilities are owned, but in the coming years, it will be forced to acquire more facilities: “Farmers are retiring and do not have people to continue, so we are forced to acquire them to maintain production.” He considers it “a shame that a sector that should have been nurtured to prevent its decline has been subjected to overregulation in recent years, which has wiped out most family farms.”
Pascual confirms that Icpor Soria is a very consolidated company in the sector due to a market that continues to grow, despite administrative limitations on starting farms. In 2024, it achieved a profit of €7 million before taxes.
Most of its production goes to the national market, especially hams, loins, or bellies. Other pieces are exported because they have more demand, mainly to Asian markets such as Vietnam, China, Japan, or South Korea. Therefore, it does not fear US tariffs, as Spain hardly sells there, and the disagreements between China and the US may even improve Spain’s situation as an exporter in Asia.