Spanish Cooperatives Meet in Córdoba

Major Spanish cooperatives gathered early this week to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their collaboration as well as estimated production.

By Alexis Kerner
Nov. 14, 2016 12:01 UTC
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Major Spanish coop­er­a­tives gath­ered early this week in Córdoba at the tech­ni­cal meet­ing for the Agro-Alimentary Cooperatives of Andalusia to dis­cuss the strengths and weak­nesses of their col­lab­o­ra­tion as well as the year´s pro­jected pro­duc­tion esti­mates.

During the meet­ing, all of the attend­ing coop­er­a­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tives agreed that in order to achieve a com­pet­i­tive edge they must join forces and work on tac­tics to best man­age the sup­ply chain and strate­gies to mar­ket their prod­ucts. By doing so, they believe they will be bet­ter pre­pared to defend inter­ests and grow sales. However, they also admit­ted that they needed to work on how to best col­lab­o­rate. With more coop­er­a­tives, come more opin­ions. There has already been some dis­ac­cord and a few mem­bers have been lost.

Large coop­er­a­tives present dur­ing the meet­ings included Dcoop, Jaencoop, and NYIOOC award win­ners Almazaras de la Subbetica, Oleoestepa, and Olivar de Segura.

Álvaro Olavarría, the gen­eral direc­tor of Oleoestepa offered advice from decades of his company´s ded­i­ca­tion to reach high pro­duc­tion capac­i­ties that are able to respond to export demands.

José Luis García, gen­eral direc­tor of Olivar Segura pointed out that it is nec­es­sary to con­tinue to inform con­sumers on olive oil char­ac­ter­is­tics and vari­eties. The Interprofesional del Aceite de Oliva Español has and will con­tinue to work on this goal with inter­na­tional cam­paigns.

Together these coop­er­a­tives pro­duce close to 465,000 tons of olive oil each year, 37 per­cent of the national pro­duc­tion and 17 per­cent of the global total.

Cristóbal Gallego, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Agro-Alimentary Olive Oil Cooperatives of Andalusia and the pres­i­dent of the Córdoba Federation, reported that this har­vest year´s oil yields have demon­strated a 2- to 3‑point drop since the pre­vi­ous cam­paign.

He went on to con­firm Andalusian esti­mates of pro­duc­tion to be around 1,108,000 tons and a national aver­age of between 1,300,000 and 1,350,000 tons. Although they are a bit short, he remarked that these num­bers fall into the min­i­mum limit needed to respond to demands and ensure a sta­ble mar­ket.

World pro­duc­tion has seen a 7 per­cent decrease attrib­uted to lower yields in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Tunisia, Syria and Morocco. With a lower decrease com­pared to the world aver­age, Spain and, even more so, Andalusia will find itself with an export­ing advan­tage this har­vest.



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