Brazil’s Raizen Sells Argentina Business for $1.42bn to Cut Debt

One of Brazil’s biggest energy groups is shedding a foreign operation it built less than a decade ago, a sign of how hard debt and a punishing harvest have pressed on the business.

Raízen, the fuel and sugar-ethanol joint venture between Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell and Brazilian conglomerate Cosan, is selling its Argentine operations to the Swiss commodities trader Mercuria for $1.42bn, the company said. The divestment marks a retreat from a market Raízen entered in 2018, when it bought Shell’s downstream business in Argentina for about $950m, and reflects mounting pressure on the group to shore up its finances.

Raízen has been searching for ways to ease a debt burden swollen by high capital spending and by a difficult stretch for its core sugarcane operations, where adverse weather and wildfires hurt crops. The company said the net proceeds from the Argentine sale will be used to manage its capital structure, language that underscores deleveraging as the central motive rather than any strategic expansion. The assets changing hands include a refinery in the Buenos Aires area and a retail network of roughly 600 service stations, a sizeable downstream presence that Mercuria gains as it builds out its physical fuel operations in the region.

The transaction fits a broader pattern across the Cosan group, which has spent the past year cutting debt and trimming holdings. Cosan has been redeeming bonds early and exploring share sales in other parts of its empire, including its gas-distribution arm, as part of what it describes as a liability-management drive aimed at restoring financial flexibility. For Raízen specifically, retreating from Argentina removes exposure to a notoriously volatile economy, even as it gives up a stream of fuel-retailing revenue. The decision points to a company prioritizing balance-sheet repair over geographic reach.

For Argentina, the deal hands a major retail and refining footprint to a global trading house at a moment when the country is overhauling its energy sector under President Javier Milei. Mercuria’s arrival as an operator, rather than just a trader, signals continued foreign appetite for Argentine downstream assets despite the economy’s instability. For Brazil’s Raízen, the sale is one of the larger disposals in a deleveraging campaign that investors will watch closely, given the company’s standing as one of the country’s biggest energy players and a bellwether for the Cosan group’s recovery. Whether it is enough to decisively relieve the debt strain will depend on what further steps follow.