Salt exporter wins nullity lawsuit and releases contingent liability of 11.5 billion pesos

On April 30, the Seventh District Court for Civil Matters in Mexico City declared the nullity of the contracts for the sale of salt for human consumption that the company Experiencia Nutrimental was suing the state-owned company Exportadora de Sal SA de CV (ESSA), headquartered in Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur, for having been signed by an official lacking authority and whose damages claimed by the plaintiff amounted to 11.5 billion pesos.

"The purchase and sale contracts entered into by the parties on September 1, September 17, and October 2, all in 2014, are hereby declared null and void, and consequently, they are hereby declared not to have and will not have any legal effect," states the fourth ruling of the judgment relating to ordinary commercial trial number 248/2016-VIII.

Likewise, "Exportadora de Sal, Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable, is absolved of each and every one of the benefits claimed by the plaintiff," the judge added, thus taking the first step toward eliminating the company's largest contingent liability, says its general director, Moisés Poblanno Silva, who points out that the follow-up to this nullity trial is part of ESSA's restructuring process, which has been underway since 2024.

Background

In 2016, Experiencia Nutrimental sued Exportadora de Sal SA de CV (ESSA), the Mexican government-owned salt company, for breach of three contracts for the sale of salt for human consumption. ESSA argued, among other things, that the contracts were sham transactions because they were signed by a person who lacked the authority, and that they failed to comply with other formalities. The company's main product was industrial salt.

Furthermore, requesting that an illegal product be sold, Experiencia Nutrimental decided to pursue the lawsuit and seek damages estimated at $585 million, approximately 11.5 billion pesos.

"The amount of supposed fine salt for human consumption that Experiencia Nutrimental had acquired from ESSA was also illogical and disproportionate, since in order to satisfy it ESSA would have had to produce one million four hundred seventy thousand tons per year, which with the table salt plant (the only one suitable for human consumption) would have taken 21 years just to secure the first year of the contract, without considering that year after year there would be a 15% increase, a definitely absurd demand, but one that did cause damage to the company since it had to record it as a contingent liability, which prevented significant investments in the company for years," explained ESSA's legal department.

The agency emphasized that thanks to the reorganization and restructuring efforts at the salt company, headed by Moisés Poblanno, important achievements have been made in recent months, such as the elimination of contingent liabilities and the consolidation of the commercialization of the total industrial salt production by 2025.