Beginnings.
The group’s origins date back to the textile industry, a sector in which the Eurnekian family was a leader in Argentina. Its vertical integration ranged from sowing cotton and spinning yarn to the design, manufacturing and knitting of garments for leading brands.
In the late 1970s, the group made a strategic shift into the communications sector, developing a media group whose backbone was Cablevisión —the largest cable TV network in South America— together with the América TV channel, América 24 —the first 24-hour live news channel—, 4 radio stations, the financial newspaper El Cronista Comercial and the evening paper Extra.
Airports.
In 1998, Corporación América transformed itself once again and won the concession to operate 33 airports of the Argentine national airport system through its company Aeropuertos Argentina 2000. This made the company the group’s flagship.
Later, in 2001 and 2008, it added the Neuquén and Bahía Blanca airports to its portfolio, expanding into other countries in the region, Europe and Asia.
In Latin America, it successively won the concessions for Uruguay’s two main airports, Montevideo (2003) and Punta del Este (2008); in Brazil, for Natal in the northeast (2011) and the capital, Brasília (2012); in Peru, the concession to operate five airports of the southern system —Arequipa, Juliaca, Puerto Maldonado, Tacna and Ayacucho (2011)—; and in Ecuador, the terminals of Guayaquil (2007) and Baltra, in the Galápagos archipelago (2011).
In Asia, Corporación América Airports has managed and operated the Yerevan and Gyumri airports in Armenia since 2002, and, since 2014, the Pisa and Florence airports in the Tuscany region of Italy.
On February 1, 2018, a new chapter began for the group’s airport division: Corporación América Airports completed its initial public offering and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CAAP.
Energy.
As part of its diversification strategy, the group also decided to invest in energy. In the first decade of the millennium it built a full-cycle biodiesel plant in San Lorenzo, in the province of Santa Fe.
The creation of Unitec Bio is the sustainable alternative to complement the region’s energy mix. The full-cycle plant located in Puerto General San Martín, in the province of Santa Fe, produces 240,000 tons of biodiesel and other by-products per year. The goal is to boost renewable energy in a region with great productive potential thanks to its climate and logistics conditions.
In 2013, Corporación América International acquired a majority stake in Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC), fully entering the conventional energy sector. In 2015, CGC bought Petrobras’ assets in the Austral Basin (province of Santa Cruz), becoming the leading upstream and midstream company in that basin.
CGC (Compañía General de Combustibles) concentrates gas exploration and production operations, as well as conventional and unconventional (shale and tight) oil drilling. It is the leading gas producer in the Continental Austral Basin, in the province of Santa Cruz, and a shareholder and co-controlling party of the largest gas transportation network in northern and central-western Argentina (TGN – Transportadora de Gas del Norte), which supplies provinces and municipalities as well as neighboring countries (Chile, Bolivia and Brazil).
In 2021 it acquired Sinopec Argentina Exploration and Production. With this purchase, CGC substantially increased its daily oil production and added more than 4,600 km² to its assets, most of them located in the Golfo San Jorge Basin, in the province of Santa Cruz, and in the Cuyana Basin, in the province of Mendoza.
Agribusiness.
In the agribusiness segment, Corporación América International controls two leading companies in the sector: Bodega del Fin del Mundo and Unitec Bio.
In the wine business, the story begins in Armenia, particularly at the facilities and vineyards of Karas Winery; from there, the group decided to invest in Argentina and broaden its horizons in the wine industry.
Since 2002, Bodega del Fin del Mundo, located in San Patricio del Chañar in the province of Neuquén, has led the creation and growth of a new wine-producing region in southern Argentina. Today the company is a regional benchmark and produces excellent-quality wines sold in both domestic and international markets.
In the provinces of Chaco and Formosa, Unitec Bio operates modern farms where it grows cotton and various oilseeds over a productive area of more than 100,000 hectares. Each planting calendar is carefully organized and planned to optimize the soil’s natural resources and assess the performance of cereals and oilseeds.
Unitec Bio also preserves and monitors a reserve of more than 5,000 hectares of native forest in the province of Chaco and more than 10,000 hectares in the province of Formosa.
Infrastructure.
Through the construction company Helport S.A., the group has established itself in the construction and infrastructure sector, in both private and public works. It has built everything from large buildings to airport terminals and runways, as well as more than 1,200 km of roads in Argentina.
It currently develops real estate projects through Corporación América Real Estate.
One of the unit’s most significant projects is Distrito Las Artes, a 23-hectare site in the city of Córdoba that aims to become the country’s first Eco-district, including housing, offices, a chapel, shopping centers and healthcare facilities.
Services.
In services, Corporación América channels its retail business through Shop Gallery and Conamer S.A., which are present in most of the airports managed by the group.
Each store offers the best national and international brands in a modern, unique environment for everyone passing through an airport terminal: a “travel retail” service similar to that of Duty Free Shops.
Technology.
In 2013, Corporación América International entered the technology sector by creating Unitec Blue. Its facilities and production plant are located in the city of Chascomús, in the province of Buenos Aires.
The significant initial investment went into general infrastructure, laboratories and production rooms, as well as equipment from the sector’s leading suppliers, enabling its card manufacturing and personalization processes to meet international quality and security standards.
Unitec Blue’s production lines serve a wide range of industries —banking, transportation, logistics, healthcare and agribusiness— at local and regional level.