Grupo Gloria exits Colombia; the Peruvian conglomerate that controlled dairy brands Algarra and Lechesan in Colombia for 14 years, shut down its processing operations on the weekend of March 14 and 15, 2026, when machines and boilers at the Cogua plant in Cundinamarca were switched off and remaining product in tanks was packaged and evacuated, according to union Sinaltrainbec, which confirmed the full production stop as of March 15, 2026.
The company’s exit from the dairy business directly affects consumers: Algarra and Lechesan will no longer produce whole milk, pasteurized milk, or the private‑label dairy maquila they supplied to discount chains such as D1 and Ara in Colombia, while the Simijaca plant in Boyaca will continue producing juice under the Nectar California brand as the country’s only remaining industrial activity.
Duro golpe al agro en #Boyacá, Leche Gloria cierra su negocio en Colombia y deja a cientos de trabajadores sin empleo https://t.co/f8LIz0l5UP pic.twitter.com/an1n9bJGkI
— Tuiteros Boyacá Col (@TuiterosBoyaca) March 16, 2026
Fifteen years of losses, a US$2.2 million fine, and a strategic pivot
Grupo Gloria entered Colombia in 2004 through its Gloria Colombia S.A.S. subsidiary, acquiring the Algarra brand and building a distribution network that reached supermarkets and retailers across the country, but the operation posted its last profit in 2016 and then accumulated losses that reached US$12.2 million in 2019 alone, according to corporate records reviewed by outlet La Republica, establishing a pattern of persistent financial underperformance that preceded the dairy exit by several years.
The financial trajectory worsened in February 2025 when the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (SIC), Colombia’s consumer protection and competition authority, fined Gloria Colombia S.A.S. the equivalent of US$2.2 million, after an investigation found that the company had commercialized a product labeled as whole pasteurized UHT milk that in fact contained lactosuero (liquid whey, a dairy byproduct), violating the standards that prohibit adding whey at any stage of the production chain.
That regulatory sanction, combined with sustained losses and a competitive dairy market already dominated by Alpina, Colanta, and Parmalat, made the Colombian segment difficult to justify against the global capital allocation priorities of the Grupo Gloria holding.
The critical context for the exit is the conglomerate’s concurrent acquisition of 80% of Molfino Hermanos, the operator of Saputo Argentina, for an estimated US$500 million, a transaction still subject to closing and representing a far larger strategic bet than the Colombian dairy operation.
Workers misled, farmers exposed, and a market gap to fill
On March 15, 2026, the company summoned approximately 150 workers from Cogua, Bucaramanga, Valledupar, and Barranquilla to what it claimed was an industrial safety training session.
Instead, the company issued termination notices. Some workers accepted severance indemnifications, while others refused to sign. Sinaltrainbec president Freddy Ricardo Garcia Galeno denounced the maneuver, and the union confirmed that the company had not formally notified Colombia’s Ministry of Labor about the mass dismissal in advance.
On March 9, 2026, six days before the plant closure, Grupo Gloria held an Extraordinary Shareholders’ Assembly that approved changing the subsidiary’s corporate name from Gloria Colombia S.A.S. to Alimentos Gcol S.A.S., a legal step that signals the dairy exit was a planned and approved corporate decision rather than an emergency response, and the Ministry of Labor‘s apparent unawareness of the process raises procedural questions under Colombia’s collective dismissal regulations.
The disappearance of Algarra and Lechesan from Colombian shelves closes a 70-year chapter in the country’s dairy market, but the more pressing concern is not brand nostalgia: the small dairy farmers in the Cogua-Zipaquirá corridor who supplied raw milk to the plant now face a gap that established Colombian processors such as Alpina, Colanta, and Lácteos del Campo will need to absorb, and whether that absorption happens quickly enough to prevent farm-level losses will be a direct test of how resilient Colombia’s domestic dairy supply chain is in the face of a sudden, significant industrial exit.