The company sells low-quality products at high prices in the stores of the Cuban military conglomerate Gaesa
14ymedio, Havana, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, April 8, 2026 – The Vima Foods group, known in Cuba for its low quality food products, expects revenue of 250 million dollars (216 million euros) in 2026, a figure higher than last year and more than double what it reported in 2024. In a statement distributed to the media this Tuesday, the Spanish company also states that it plans to double those revenues in five years, thanks to the expansion of its businesses in the Americas and its “leap” into European and African markets.
Thus, by 2030 the firm, whose name comes from the combination of the initials of its founder, Víctor Moro Suárez, aims to reach 500 million dollars (432 million euros), driven by “its recent change in visual identity and its positioning as a trusted partner” in what the sector calls the “horeca channel”—an acronym for hotels, restaurants, and catering—and in retail sales “worldwide.”
This year they also plan to become a “comprehensive distribution solution” for Spanish and international brands “with expansion strategies in global markets.” This offer to serve as a “bridge between Spanish production and global demand” is considered by Vima as “a step forward,” supported by “its consolidated infrastructure, its knowledge of local markets, and its network of relationships with operators, supermarkets, and distributors in more than 30 countries.
The company boasts of operating “in more than 10,000 points of sale” and of being “in the main supermarket chains in the Americas”
The company boasts of operating “in more than 10,000 points of sale” and of having a presence “in the main supermarket chains in the Americas such as Walmart, Chedraui, Rey, Éxito, Soriana, and Carrefour.” Likewise, it notes that it supplies “the main hotel chains in the region.”
In its statement, it does not detail how business is distributed among the seven countries where it claims to have distribution centers: Spain, the United States, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, and China, listed in that order. However, according to last year’s figures, the Island is its main market, accounting for nearly half of its business continue reading
In Cuba, Vima products, ranging from frozen vegetables to prepared foods, including canned vegetables, jams, and grains, are as ubiquitous in stores as they are criticized by buyers. To the poor reputation for quality is added, in the midst of the unprecedented crisis in the country, the high prices at which they are sold in Cimex’s dollarized stores, which belong to the Grupo de Administración Empresarial (Gaesa), the conglomerate of the Armed Forces.
A 1.5-liter bottle of water costs one dollar, double what it costs in a private shop, and rice is 1,000 pesos per kilogram, when it is 600 in small private businesses.
Another thing that has proliferated in recent times, not only in Vima’s own establishments but also in other dollar stores, is reusable green bags with the Vima logo. Their price is 40¢ (US), and since there are almost never free plastic bags in these markets, the customer is forced to buy one, a clever form of advertising paid for by users of the state-run stores where the Spanish company sells its goods.
The products of this brand, moreover, are not found in Spanish supermarkets, nor in Mexico City, but one would not guess this from reading its corporate information, where the Island appears to occupy just another space, and not the pillar of the conglomerate.
Vima insists on describing itself as a “family business whose roots are linked to the Galician fishing sector,” despite being little known in that region, while emphasizing its renewed expansionist ambitions. “One of our crucial markets continues to be the Americas, where we already have a very consolidated presence from north to south. However, our vocation is global; we are preparing the ground for large-scale expansion into Europe and Africa,” Víctor Moro Morros-Sarda, vice president of the conglomerate and son of the president and founder, Víctor Moro Suárez, is quoted as saying in the text.
His statements continue, emphasizing the company’s future ambitions: “We want Spanish and international brands to see Vima Foods not only as a distributor, but as a strategic ally. We have the infrastructure, local knowledge in complex markets, and the logistics necessary to bring the quality of our products to any corner of the world.” And they conclude: “Our recent participation in the Alimentaria trade fair has been the turning point to showcase this new identity and our capacity to scale the business exponentially through 2030.”
“We have the infrastructure and logistics necessary to bring the quality of our products to any corner of the world”
Except in this statement, moreover, the Moro family has never hidden its ties to the Island. Moro Morros-Sarda held a lavish wedding in Havana in December 2023, and his father, the son of Víctor Moro Rodríguez, a politician of Spain’s Transition, who died in 2021 and also headed a frozen packaged goods conglomerate, lived for more than 25 years in Cuba, where he was president of the Association of Spanish Businesspeople in the country.
Last year, in a report published by the local press, they highlighted a “new subsidiary” created by the group on the Island, Vima Caribe, intended to channel “all commercial operations into a new branch, a company with 100% foreign capital, responsible for the import, storage, commercialization, and distribution of the group’s products in Cuba.”
It thus became clear that the “collaboration project” between Vima and Gaesa, signed in 2024, went beyond the management of several “dollarized” stores. It involved the legal creation of a new company, which has not been reported by the official Cuban press.
In the same report, Economía Digital provided other details about the ups and downs of Vima Foods’ subsidiaries, not for nothing referring to it as “a highly dispersed conglomerate.” For example, it said that Corporación Alimentaria Vima had “transferred” its corporate employees in Spain to a new company, CS Vima, based in Madrid. It is in the Spanish capital where the head of the conglomerate is registered, that until March 2023 was located in Panama.
That same year, as recorded in the Commercial Registry, the group moved its registered office to Spain and transformed from a public limited company to a limited liability company, something that, above all, further strengthens the family’s control over the company and external investors.
In 2001, its revenues had been, as detailed, 25 million euros. That is, in a quarter century, the business has multiplied nearly tenfold
Even more opaque is the origin and growth of its multimillion-dollar business. The Panama Papers, the publication of the Mossack Fonseca law firm database by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), revealed in 2016 that Vima World, whose name has changed several times since it was founded, appeared among companies registered in tax havens.
In the ICIJ database, it appears as founded in January 1994 in the British Virgin Islands. However, Moro Suárez himself admitted in an interview with the Galician press in 2006 that his empire began in Cuba. When asked by the journalist how he “learned” to manage “one hundred sixty employees who serve twenty million meals worldwide,” the businessman replied: “I found a niche in the Caribbean area, starting from Cuba, and that circumstance led me to organize this group of companies.”
Another earlier report, published in La Voz de Galicia, also confirmed this: “Vima was born in Havana in 1994, to take advantage of the opening of the Cuban market to tourism investment, and become the main distributor to hotels and restaurants.” In 2002, the report stated that Vima World, “a distributor based in Vigo and 100% owned by the Galician Moro family,” was the leader in the sector in Cuba, controlling 15% of food distribution and 25% of supply to hotels. In 2001, its revenues had been, as detailed, 25 million euros. That is, in a quarter century, the business had multiplied nearly tenfold.
How a company could be founded in Cuba, run by a foreigner in the mid-1990s, and reach those figures in just a few years is one of the questions raised about Vima, which began appearing in establishments on the Island precisely at that time, the era of dollarization and the desperation of the Special Period. The answer may lie in that 2006 interview, in which the journalist wrote that, according to what he had been told, Moro Suárez had connections with figures of the regime, including Fidel Castro himself.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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