Spanish Cooperatives Meet in Córdoba

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.

• El Dia Cordoba


• La Informacion