Manuel Santos Uribelarrea Balcarce | |
|---|---|
| Born | Manuel Santos Uribelarrea Balcarce November 10, 1978 Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Occupation | Business executive |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Organization(s) | MSU Group (MSU Agro, MSU Energy, MSU Green Energy) |
| Known for | Founder and CEO of MSU Group; chairing the board of MSU Energy |
Manuel Santos Uribelarrea Balcarce (November 10, 1978) is an Argentine businessman, founder and chief executive of MSU Group. He led the group's diversification from large-scale farming (MSU Agro) into thermal power generation through MSU Energy and, later, into power generation through MSU Green Energy, the group’s renewable energy unit. [1] [2] [3]
Santos Uribelarrea was born in Buenos Aires into a family with a long-standing involvement in Argentine agriculture. [4] [5] He is the son of agribusiness entrepreneur Manuel Santos de Uribelarrea Duhau and Mercedes Balcarce, from whom he takes the surname Balcarce included in his full name. [6] In interviews, his father has publicly linked the family’s business trajectory in Argentina to the nineteenth century. [4] [1] Along with his father, Manuel Santos de Uribelarrea Duhau, he worked on consolidating MSU as a corporate group and later expanded its scope beyond agriculture, leading the company’s diversification into the energy sector. [1] [7]
In the late 1990s he promoted MSU S.A. as a platform for large-scale crop production in Argentina and neighboring markets, operating primarily on owned and leased land and adopting precision farming and no-till practices. [7] [5] [1]
MSU entered the power generation business in the mid-2010s via MSU Energy, which developed three thermal power plants in General Rojo (San Nicolás), Barker (Benito Juárez Partido) and Villa María (Córdoba). The plants began operating in simple-cycle mode between 2017 and 2018 and were converted to combined cycle in 2020, reaching a total installed capacity of about 750 MW under long-term offtake agreements. [8] [9] [10] [11] [3] [12] [13] [14]
Under his direction, the group created MSU Green Energy to develop utility-scale photovoltaic projects. Between 2023 and 2025, the company announced a long-term solar power deal with Dow for its Bahía Blanca complex. [15] [2] [16] The agreement provides electricity from MSU Green Energy’s solar parks at Las Lomas (La Rioja) and Pampa del Infierno (Chaco). [2] [15] [16] The company also announced power supply agreements with large industrial users in Argentina’s corporate renewables market, including Volkswagen, Air Liquide, Unilever, Telecom Argentina, Mastellone, Georgalos, Boortmalt, Finlays – Casa Fuentes, Sofitel, Bayer, Cerámica Alberdi, Acindar, Linde, Renova, Cirion Technologies, and other large industrial consumers. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [16]
In November 2025, MSU Green Energy was reported among the winning bidders in the economic stage of the auction to operate the El Chocón–Arroyito hydroelectric complex, alongside Central Puerto and Edison in the same Comahue concessions process, marking the company’s entry into large-scale hydropower. [27] [28] [29] [30] El Chocón–Arroyito has 1,418 MW of installed capacity. [27] [28] [29]
Santos Uribelarrea has been a speaker at business, energy and agricultural forums in Argentina. In 2024 he spoke at an energy summit organized by La Nación, outlining the group’s entry into power generation and renewable energy and discussing transmission constraints for new projects. [1] In 2025, he spoke at EconoJournal’s Energy Day, where, as President of MSU Energy, he argued that regulatory stability and macroeconomic improvements are key to driving major investments; he stated that MSU Energy’s financing costs decreased by 30% after Argentina’s elections. [31]