Manuelita
Colombian agribusiness corporation
Manuelita is a Colombian agribusiness corporation, headquartered in Palmira, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.
History
Manuelita was founded in 1864 when James Martin Eder, better known in Colombia as Santiago Eder, an American citizen born in Mitau, Courland, bought the hacienda "La Manuelita", located near Palmira, from the father of famed Colombian novelist Jorge Isaacs at a public auction. The farm's namesake was Manuela Ferrer Scarpetta, Isaacs' mother.
Eder planted various crops, including coffee in the farm, but eventually centered on sugar, and "on the first day of the first year of the twentieth century" he inaugurated a new sugar mill which had Colombia's first steam engine, and replaced the former ox-powered mill.
After don Santiago's retirement in 1903, Manuelita continued to grow under the leadership of his sons Charles James Eder, and Henry James Eder, his grandson Harold Henry Eder Caicedo, and his great-grandson Henry James Eder Caicedo. As of April 1, 2008, don Santiago's great-great-grandson Harold Enrique Eder Garcés was President of IMSA. In 1980, the size of the company was cut in half, after barely surviving a hostile takeover attempt by the Carlos Ardila Lülle's business group. This resulted in the split of the Ingenio Manuelita and Ingenio del Cauca sugar mills. This latter mill had been founded by Harold Henry Eder while he was at the head of the Eder Family enterprise and was hence a great loss to the family both economically and sentimentally.
Under Henry J. Eder's stewardship (1965–2008), Manuelita's standing in Colombia's sugar sector in terms of production fully recovered and even surpassed when compared to Manuelita and Ingenio del Cauca's combined production levels in 1980. During this period of time, Manuelita also expanded its sugar production to ventures in Peru and Brazil, including a project named Arena Dulce, or Sweet Sand, in which nearly 2000 hectares of Peruvian desert were planted in sugarcane using vanguard drip irrigation technology adapted by Manuelita technicians to the specificities of cane cultivation and harvesting and which are producing record levels of tons of cane per hectare and percentage of sucrose in cane.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6753064. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1864, 1903, 2008 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Manuelita” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.